The Council of Animals

by Nick McDonell

  “Wait,” shouted the dog, as they picked up speed. “We can’t leave the bear! She’s just up ahead.”

  “A bear?” said Edgar.

  “The bear lay down and didn’t want to move,” explained the cat in the rushing wind.

  “I won’t abandon the bear!” barked the dog. “No animal left behind!”

  And the dog slapped his paw on the kill switch, and the cart stopped.

  Ahead in the gloom, the bear lay in the same position in which the animals had left her.

  “What’s wrong with the bear?” asked Edgar.

  The moles shook their heads in shame.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the dog. “She’s one of our own and we’re not leaving her.”

  On his crickled old legs, the dog climbed out of the cart and approached with great care. After all, she was a sleeping bear.

  “Dog,” called the cat after him. “She doesn’t want to come. Leave her be!”

  The bear wasn’t really hibernating, but she wasn’t quite awake either. She was in between, half listening, half lost.

  “Bear,” said the dog, “bear, wake up!”

  The bear didn’t stir.

  “Bear,” said the dog, “the mission! We’ve got a human who speaks grak. We’re bringing him back to the others, to stop the attack.”

  The bear growled. Ducking down inside the cart to hide, Edgar looked to the cat, whose hair was on end. He was still a little boy, in a dark tunnel, with a bear, and he stroked the cat for comfort, and the cat let him. (Actually, quite enjoyed it.)

  “Bear…” said the dog.

  “WHAT?!” The bear’s roar echoed in the cave. “What do you want, dog?”

  The dog, a veteran and patriot, stood his ground.

  “We leave no creature behind,” he said.

  The bear’s eyes flashed. Coal and light. She bared her teeth.

  “We?” said the bear. “Who is we? I am no dog. I am no cat. I am no mute mole. You creatures imagine you may save the humans. But you’re the ones who’ll need saving.”

  “I won’t leave you behind,” barked the dog.

  “You are a fool, dog. This cat has brainwashed you. And for what? For humans? I was there, dog, at the center of their story machines. Hollywood! They said, ‘The bark of history is loud, but it sounds toward justice.’ Ha! Now look at them. Even if they had banded together and achieved their dreams, it would have been too late. The Calamity was underway before they could have stopped it. They deserve to be baboon chow.”

  Silence in the tunnel. But after a moment, the cat spoke up.

  “Why then,” she asked, “did you vote to save them, bear, if you feel this way?”

  “I was in a better mood,” said the bear, ice in her voice. “Everything is mood. Perception! You’re only chemicals, cat. See what happens when the water in your brain turns black. Leave me here in this tunnel. All is death, in the end.”

  “Uhh, Mr. Bear,” said Edgar, peering up over the edge of the cart. “Hello.”

  “Psst,” whispered the dog. “That’s Ms. Bear, lad.”

  “Hi there, Ms. Bear?”

  Now the bear sat up.

  “Say that again,” said the bear, disbelieving her ears.

  “Hello,” said Edgar.

  “How did you … you can speak grak!” said the bear, paw on her heart.

  “I don’t know,” said Edgar. “I just listened, and read. But Ms. Bear, do you really think I should be … baboon chow?”

  The bear rose. Even on all four paws, her head was higher than the cart. If she wanted to, she could have seized Edgar in her teeth. Edgar gripped the edge of the cart but didn’t duck down as the bear put her snout right up to his face. He could smell her bear breath, feel its heat.

  “Aren’t you afraid, boy?”

  “Bear,” barked the dog, “what’s this, then, bullying this boy?”

  “Answer me,” said the bear. “For if you are afraid, the baboons will know, and they will tear you apart.”

  Edgar stayed still and pulled his gaze back from the bear’s teeth to her eyes.

  “I guess I’m afraid,” said Edgar, “but isn’t it like you said? ‘All is death’ anyway? So it’s like I told the cat: I have to try.”

  The bear laughed. “You’re just a child,” she said. “You don’t understand.”

  “I do understand!” said Edgar. “I understand you’re just a sad bear, lying here by herself in the dark.”

  And the bear knew it was true, and was ashamed.

  “But you don’t have to be,” said Edgar. “You can come with us. Will you?”

  * * *

  The bear’s decision would have tremendous consequences. As historians, how are we to understand it?

  First, I will say that we cannot understand history without biology. Some of my colleagues in certain schools of social science find biology to be irrelevant, even ideologically suspect, in our line of work. They are, sadly, blinkered. By the same token, biology cannot explain all history, no matter what the molecular fundamentalist lemurs insist. It remains equally important to take into account “social” or “cultural” behaviors. A balance must be struck. In the final analysis, it makes no sense at all to distinguish between aspects of historical behavior which are “biological” and those which are “cultural.”

  Which brings us to the bear. How to understand her decision. What will it be?

  The boy’s vocal cords vibrate, creating sound waves. These are transmitted through the tunnel air to the bear’s ears, where in turn the eardrums vibrate. Physics. The bear says yes or the bear says no. If you are a psychoneuroendocrinologist, you might explain the decision based on the rise or fall of bear testosterone levels in certain parts of the bear’s brain, making her more or less aggressive. If you are a bioengineer, you might say that the “yes” or “no” depended on the long muscles around the bear’s mandible allowing it to move her jaw into the shape necessary to form words in grak. And if you are an evolutionary biologist, you might say that the bear decided one way or the other because over the course of millions of years, bears that responded in this way to stimulus stood a better chance of passing their genes on to the next generation of bears.

  And so on. I, a humble historian (or animal contextographer), would suggest to you that no discipline or explanation, on its own, suffices. Categories have their uses, of course. They help you remember facts. But the boundaries between categories, we would do well to remember, are arbitrary. Once they are set we become too impressed with their importance—like swallows hypnotized by traveling chipmunk magicians and their swinging acorn amulets.

  Edgar looked into the bear’s black eyes.

  * * *

  The bear took a deep breath.

  Shook the cave dust off her pelt.

  Then she stood on her hind legs and roared:

  “Save the humans!”

  “Hoo-raa!” barked the dog. “Onward!”

  “But what will you say to the baboons, boy?” said the bear, as she climbed into the cart. “They are not like me.”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Edgar, for indeed he did not.

  Chapter 29

  With the bear on board, the cart was crowded (even with the moles balanced on its edges like surfers). After a few more miles of zooming, the tracks ended in darkness. All clambered out.

  Edgar kept close to the dog behind the bear.

  “Not to worry,” said the dog as they padded along the cave. “There, see, the glow.”

  Their eyes slowly adjusted from the darkness to the phosphorescence. They had returned to the great underwater salt lake.

  “No sign of that lizard,” said the dog. “Alright cat, what’s the order of operations here? How do we get back up top?”

  The cat had anticipated this problem. To enter, she had carefully climbed down from the mole access tunnel at the top of the cavern. In contrast, the bear and dog, as we saw, slid down the tunnel, flew into the air, and thence down into the salty, freezing lake.
The sight had provided the cat some pleasure. Now, however, the bear and dog and boy had no way of getting back up to the mouth of the cave. The wall was too steep. How would they get up there? The cat had hoped there might be a way. Having failed to invent one, she was at this point scanning the cavern for alternative exits.

  Edgar and the dog saw the concern on the cat’s whiskered face and looked to the bear, who pointed up to the mouth of the mole tunnel high in the cavern wall. “That’s how we got in.”

  “So we’re stuck here?” barked the dog. “Classic feline planni—Edgar watch out! There’s a scorpion on your leg!”

  * * *

  Here is no place for a discussion of arachnid aesthetics. But one could write a whole chapter on the glistening, hairy, eight-leggedness; the markings along the carapace; the webs and eggs.

  Some like that sort of thing. I personally am of the opinion that the Australian tarantula self-portraits are among the Animal Kingdom’s great artistic treasures. And this scorpion was especially handsome.

  But it did look as though it was about to sting and kill this little boy.

  * * *

  Edgar hadn’t noticed the scorpion. Then he did and was frightened. But instead of batting it away or freezing, Edgar tried to look it in the eyes and talk to it. His voice shook as he did.

  “Hello, scorpion.”

  “Careful, Edgar!” hissed the cat.

  The dog growled. He had known a ridgeback who had died of a scorpion sting in the bacon wars—and a grown human soldier who, not shaking out his boots one morning, had been stung into a coma.

  “Shh!” Edgar told the dog. “He’s saying something.”

  “You’re standing on my nest.”

  The scorpion’s voice was very quiet. Edgar bent down close to its pincers to hear.

  “You’re standing on my nest,” repeated the scorpion.

  Edgar raised a foot and, to his dismay, found that he was standing on a small hole in the dirt.

  “I’m sorry!” he said, stepping away. The scorpion hopped off his leg, pincers clicking.

  “What … animal are you?” said the scorpion. “I have never heard your voice before.”

  “I’m a human boy,” said Edgar. “Can’t you see me?”

  “We cave scorpions don’t have eyes. But I can feel your vibrations. And I can hear you. We have heard, down here, that many animals have decided to kill you … humans.”

  “Get away from that scorpion, Edgar,” growled the dog.

  The scorpion raised his stinger higher and mock charged the dog.

  The cat crouched to pounce.

  “Wait!” cried Edgar, jumping between the cat and the scorpion. “What do you think of that?” he asked the scorpion. “Should the animals kill us humans?”

  “No abovegrounder has ever asked my opinion before,” said the scorpion.

  All were silent, waiting for the scorpion to continue. It clicked its pincers in thought.

  “And now, without warning, a human asks me. What do I think? I think vertebrates and mammals and all the above-grounders will never be fair. And I know they are no better than insects; we’re all the same. Bears seek out caves, do they not? The hard walls of the cave are not so different from the hard plates of my back. And yet in the animal councils you have drunken monkeys and idiot horses, lions who can’t count higher than their claws, superstitious birds, ignorant of life on the ground. These animals may join animal councils, while we insects and arachnids can’t? None of us? Oh, you say, insects choose never to come. No! We choose to survive. The structures prevent us from joining their councils and participating. We cannot come into the light to join the council. We’d get eaten immediately! And yet the council is held on a cliff top, in the afternoon.”

  “That doesn’t sound fair,” said Edgar.

  “But what is to be done?” asked the cat, who had, in her time, killed and eaten a scorpion. “The world is too large and various to include every creature in every council.”

  “Same as always,” said the scorpion. “Such careless cat contempt has driven the cockroaches into mindless, collectivist violence.”

  “Scorpion, you should come with us!” said Edgar. “All the cave insects should come if they want. We wouldn’t let any of the other animals eat you. We’d be your eyes. Right?”

  The other animals, with their deep distrust of stinging bugs, were silent. But Edgar insisted.

  “Right?!” he said.

  Reluctantly, all the animals nodded their heads, muttering their assent.

  “In that case, I would love to come to the council,” said the scorpion.

  And in a blink, he climbed onto Edgar’s shoulder.

  The cat and dog stiffened. At any moment, the scorpion, if he so chose, could plunge his stinger into the boy’s neck. Edgar stiffened too but then tried to relax. He remembered being swatted by his aunt and resolved not to swat the scorpion. Which would probably kill him if he did anyway.

  “Okay,” said Edgar. “The problem is, we all need to get up to that tunnel.”

  “Hmm,” said the scorpion. “Maybe I have some friends who can help.”

  * * *

  This is a work of history and animal contextography rather than pure mathematics, but as we have established, the disciplines are inextricable. What happened next requires some numbers. The average cave ant can support five thousand times its body weight. The average adult female grizzly bear weighs between three hundred and four hundred pounds. This bear, as we have noted, was not a particularly well-fed bear. Dividing pounds by ants, we find that a minimum of thirty thousand ants are necessary to lift a bear. And this is a minimum—a minimum!—of nine 4,000-ant-strong colonies.

  Again, I am no mathematician. But this is, roughly, how many ants would have been required.

  But how about … flying cave bugs? How many post-Calamity mutated Troglocladius hajdi were there?

  A lot, is the answer, and a lot of other cave bugs, too. Pre-Calamity, T. hajdi had been the only flighted underground insect—but post-mutation, the flight had spread rapidly in the world’s darkest places. And that day, such an array of flying cave insects as you have never imagined heeded the scorpion’s call. Ants and skull beetles and floating worms, winged-pseudoscorpions and millipedes and centipedes. A buzzing, clicking tide. All swarming around Edgar’s feet, and then gently taking hold of him …

  “Steady on, steady on,” yelped the dog, as he felt the bugs’ embrace.

  “Thanks no,” said the cat to the bugs. “I’ll make my own way.” And she leapt, climbing up the steep wall to the access tunnel’s mouth. There she turned to watch an unprecedented takeoff.

  Insect latched to insect latched to insect. The whole swarm’s power pulsing, tiny leg to tarsal pad to claw … One or a thousand or a million would never have moved the bear an inch.

  But in the vast cavern, billions of insects linked up.

  BUZZZZZZZ …

  The swarm gently encircled the animals and slowly, steadily …

  BUZZZZZZZ …

  “Wheels up!” cried the dog. “Dog aloft!”

  “Yahoo!” cried Edgar, flying up over the lake.

  BUZZZZZZZ!

  And the bear was airborne. As she rose, the despair she’d known … floated away. Her mind cleared. Soon she’d be back in the sunlight. The sunlight that made berries, and honey, and the glint off a salmon’s scales.

  Gently, the swarm deposited her great bulk beside the cat, at a slanted tunnel’s edge, high in the cavern wall. The bear looked out over the great underground lake and down at the shore where she’d come from. For a moment, at least, she’d been a flying bear. And as she turned around into the darkness of the tunnel she felt, for the first time in her life, love for insects.

  Edgar and the dog and the moles were already there, waiting in the gloom.

  The moles bowed to the swarm.

  “Collective action,” said the scorpion. “Onward!”

  And the swarm buzzed to Edgar:

 
“GOOD LUCK.”

  Chapter 30

  As the animals trooped up the steep tunnel, the cat laid out a plan.

  “As you know, no animal invited to the council-place can be harmed by another animal. Edgar is now invited by us, but the law doesn’t hold until he gets there. So, when we get out of the cave, we’ll form a circle around him, to hide him until we get to the safe zone.”

  “Good copy,” huffed the dog. It had been so much easier falling down this tunnel.

  “Bear, you’ll take the lead. If Edgar can’t convince the baboons and the rest to let humanity live, we’re going to have to fight our way out. I’m not going to lie to you: this could be a suicide mission. But it is humanity’s only chance.”

  The animals climbed uphill for a little while in silence. The cat wished she had a better plan than one boy who spoke grak. Would Edgar’s words convince the baboons and all the other animals? Probably not. But what else did they have? She looked at Edgar, wide-eyed in the gloom, between the old dog and the ragged bear, tiny scorpion on his shoulder.

  * * *

  Finally, Edgar and the animals reached the cave where their adventure had begun. It was still dry, the pile of bones was still in the corner, the glow of the post-Calamity Spanish moss still lit the walls. But in one important respect, it was different.

  It was occupied by a baboon.

  Not the baboon who had been a member of the voting council—a different baboon.

  A baboon with long, curling, white eyebrows.

  “So,” said this baboon, “it’s true.…”

  The cat froze, the dog growled, the bear tensed.

  “I’d heard rumors, but I didn’t believe … a cat, traveling in the company of a human who…”

  The baboon galumphed over to Edgar and gave him a sniff.

  “Is it true? Does he speak…?”

  “Hello, Mr. Baboon,” said Edgar.

  “He does!”

  The baboon slapped the ground in hooting excitement.