Unicorns

by Jack Dann

  Dumont said, "He'll kill her."

  The students were almost quiet now, whispering. Anderson had to fight the impulse to dash out, to try to hold back the white beast, to knock him off his feet and wrestle him to the ground if he could. Except that he could not; that a dozen like him could not, no more than they could have overthrown an elephant. If he, or anyone here, were to attempt such a thing now, people would surely die.

  The young woman thrust out Dumont's loaf—common white bread from some grocery store. After a moment she crouched to bring her eyes on a level with the unicorn's.

  Anderson heard himself murmur,

  "Behold a pale horse:

  And his name that sat on him was Death."

  Then, when tension had been drawn so fine that it seemed to him that he must break, it broke instead. The ivory lance came up, and the shining, impossible lancer trotted forward, nibbled at the bread, nuzzled the young woman's neck. Still quiet, indeed almost hushed, the students surged forward. A boy with a feathery red beard patted the unicorn's withers, and a girl Anderson recognized from one of his classes buried her face in the flowing mane. The young woman herself, the girl with the bread, stroked fierce horn. Anderson found that he was there too, his hand on a gleaming flank.

  Then the magic blew away beneath the threshing of a helicopter, dissolved like a dream at cockcrow. It came in low across the park, a dark blue gunship. (Police, Anderson thought crazily, police and not the Army this time.) A dozen people yelled, and the students began to scatter.

  It banked in a tight turn and came back trailing a white plume of tear gas. Anderson ran with the rest then, hearing the thunder of the unicorn's hooves over—no, under—the whicker of the four-bladed prop. There was a sputter of fire from some automatic weapon.

  Back in the Liberal Arts Building several hours later, he went to the restroom to wash the traces of the gas from his face and hands and put drops in his faintly burning eyes. The smell of the gas was in his trousers and jacket; they would have to be cleaned. He wished vaguely that he had been prescient enough to keep a change of clothes on campus.

  When he opened the door to his office, the young woman was there. Absurdly, she rose when he entered, as though sex roles had not just been eliminated but reversed.

  He nodded to her, and she extended her hand. "I'm Julie Coronell, Dr. Anderson."

  "It's a pleasure," he said. She might have been quite pretty, he decided, if she were not so thin. And so nervous.

  "I—I noticed you out there. With the unicorn. I was the one who fed him bread."

  "I know you were," Anderson said. "I noticed you, too. Everyone did."

  She actually blushed, something he had not seen in years. "I've some more." She lifted a brown paper sack. "The other wasn't mine, really—I got it from some man there. He's in the Biology Department, I think."

  Anderson nodded. "Yes, he is."

  "That was white. That bread. This is pumpernickel. I thought he—the unicorn. I thought he might like it better."

  Anderson could not keep from grinning at that, and she smiled too.

  "Well, anyway, I like it better. Do you know the story about the general's horse? Or am I being a pest?"

  "Not at all. I'd love to hear the story of the general's horse, especially if it has anything to do with unicorns."

  "It doesn't, really. Only with horses, you know, and pumpernickel. The general was one of Napoleon's. I think Bernadotte, and he had a favorite charger named Nicole—we would say Nicholas or Nick. When the Grand Army occupied Germany, and the officers ate at the German country inns, they were served the coarse, brown German bread with their meals. All Frenchmen hate it, and none of them would eat it. But the others saw that Bernadotte slipped it into his pockets, and when they asked him about it, he said it was for his horse—Pain pour Nicole, bread for Nick. After that the others joked about the German 'horse bread,' pain pour Nicole, and the Germans thought that was the French name for it, and since anything French has always been very posh on menus, they used it."

  Anderson chuckled and shook his head. "Is that what you 're going to call him when you find him? Nicholas? Or will it be Nicole?"

  "Nick, actually. The story is just folk-etymology, really. But I thought of it, and it seemed to fit. Nick, because we're both Americans now. I was born in New Zealand, and that brings me to one of the things I came to ask you—what nationality are unicorns? I mean originally. Greek?"

  "Indian," Anderson told her.

  "You're making fun of me."

  He shook his head. "Not American Indian, of course. Indian like the tiger. A Roman naturalist called Pliny seems to have begun the story. He said that people in India hunted an animal he called the monoceros. Our word unicorn is a translation of that. Both words mean 'one -horned.' "

  Julie nodded.

  "Pliny said this unicorn had a head like a stag, feet like an elephant, a boar's tail, and the body of a horse. It bellowed, it had one black horn growing from its forehead, and it could not be captured alive."

  She stared at him. He stared expressionlessly back, and at last she said, "That's not a unicorn! That's not a unicorn at all. That's a rhinoceros."

  "Uh huh. Specifically, it's an Indian rhinoceros. The African ones actually have two horns, one above the other. Pliny 's description fell into the hands of the scholars of the dark ages, who knew nothing about rhinoceroses or even elephants, and the unicorn became a one-horned creature that was otherwise much like a horse. Unicorn horn was supposed to neutralize poisons, but the Indians didn't ship their rhinoceros horns west—China was much closer and much richer, and the Chinese thought rhinoceros horn was an aphrodisiac. Narwhale horns were brought in to satisfy the demand, and narwhale horns succeeded wonderfully, because narwhale horns are so utterly fantastic that no one who hasn't seen one can believe in them. They're ivory, and spiraled, and perfectly straight. You know, of course. You had your hand on one today, only it was growing out of a unicorn's head. Dumont would say out of the head of a genetically reengineered horse, but I think we both know better."

  Julie smiled. "It's wonderful, isn't it? Unicorns are real now."

  "In a way, they were real before. As Chesterton says somewhere, to think of a cow with wings is essentially to have met one. The unicorn symbolized masculine purity—which isn't such a bad thing to symbolize, after all. Unicorns were painted on shields and sewn into flags. A unicorn rampant is the badge of Scotland, just as the bald eagle is the badge of this country, and eventually that unicorn became one of the supporters of the British arms. The image, the idea, has been real for a long time. Now it's tangible."

  "And I'm glad. I like it like that. Dr. Anderson, the real reason I came to see you was that a friend told me you were the president of an organization that tries to save these animals."

  "Most of them are people. All right if I smoke?" She nodded, and Anderson took a pipe from his desk and began to pack it with tobacco. "Many of the creatures of myth were partly human and had human intelligence—lamias, centaurs, fauns, satyrs, and so forth. Often that seems to appeal to the individuals who do this sort of thing. Then too, human cellular material is the easiest of all for them to get—they can use their own."

  "Do you mean that I could make one of these mythical animals if I wanted to? Just go off and do it?"

  The telephone rang and Anderson picked it up.

  "Hello, Andy?" It was Dumont again.

  "Yep," Anderson said.

  "It seems to have gotten away."

  "Uh huh. Our bunch certainly couldn't find it, and our operator said there was nothing on the police radio."

  "Well, it gave them the slip. A student—an undergraduate, but I know him, and he's pretty reliable—just came and told me. He saw it over on the far side of the practice field. He tried to get up close, but it ran behind the field house and he lost it."

  Anderson covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said, "Nick's all right. Someone just saw him." He asked Dumont, "You send a bunch to look for
him?"

  "Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first. I gave the boy the key to my place and asked him to fetch my tranquilizer gun. He's got my van."

  "Fine. Come up here and we'll talk. Leave this student a note so he'll know where you are."

  "You don't think we ought to send some people out after the unicorn?"

  "We've had searchers out after him for a couple of hours, and so have the police. I don't know about you, but while I was beating the bushes, I was wondering just what in the name of Capitoline Jove I was going to do with him if found him. Try to ride him? Put salt on his tail? We can't do a damn thing until we've got your tranquilizer gun or some other way to control him, and by the time the boy gets back from your house in Brookwood it will be nearly dark."

  When he had cradled the telephone, Anderson said, "That should give you an idea of how well organized we are."

  Julie shrugged sympathetically.

  "In the past, you see, it was always a question of letting the creature get away. The soldiers or the police wanted to kill it, we wanted to see it spared. Usually they head for the most lightly populated area they can find. We should have anticipated that sooner or later we'd be faced with one right here in the city, but I suppose we assumed that in a case like that we'd have no chance at all. Now it turns out that we've got a chance—your friend Nick is surprisingly elusive for such a big beast—and we haven't the least idea of what to do."

  "Maybe he was born—do you say born?"

  "We usually say created, but it doesn't matter."

  "Well, maybe he was created here in the city, and he's trying to find his way out of it."

  "A creature that size?" Anderson shook his head. "He's come in from outside, from some sparsely settled rural area, or he'd have been turned in by a nosy neighbor long ago. People can—people do—perform DNA engineering in the city. Sometimes in basements or garages or kitchens, more often on the sly in college labs or some big corporation's research and development facility. They keep the creatures they've made, too; sometimes for years. I've got a sea-horse at home in an aquarium, not one of those fish you buy cast in plastic paperweights in the Florida souvenir shops, but a little fellow about ten inches long, with the head and forelegs of a pony and the hindquarters of a trout. I've had him for a year now, and I'll probably have him for another ten. But suppose he were Nick's size—where would I keep him?"

  "In a swimming pool, I imagine," Julie said. "In fact, it seems rather a nice idea. Maybe at night you could take him to Lake Michigan and ride him there, in the lake. You could wear scuba gear. I'm not a terribly good swimmer, but I think I'd do it." She smiled at him.

  He smiled back. "It does sound like fun, when you describe it."

  "Just the same, you think he's escaped from some farm—or perhaps an estate. I should think that would be more likely. The rich must have these poor, wonderful animals made for them sometimes."

  "Sometimes, yes."

  "Unicorns. A sea-horse—that's from mythology too, isn't it?"

  Anderson was lighting his pipe; the mingled fumes of sulfur and tobacco filled the office. "Balios and Xantos drew the chariot of Poseidon," he said. "In fact, Poseidon was the god of horses as well as of the sea. His herds were the waves, in a mystic sense few people understand today. The whitecaps were the white manes of his innumerable steeds."

  "And you mentioned lamias—those were snake women, weren't they?"

  "Yes."

  "And centaurs. And fauns and satyrs. Are all the animals like that, that the biologists make, from mythology?"

  Anderson shook his head. "Not all of them, no. But let me ask you a question, Ms. Coronell—"

  "Call me Julie, please."

  "All right, Julie. Now suppose that you were a biologist. In genetic engineering they've reached the stage at which any competent worker with a Master's or a PhD—and a lot of bright undergraduates—can do this sort of thing. What would you make for yourself?"

  "I have room for it, and privacy, and lots of money?"

  "If you like, yes."

  "Then I'd make a unicorn, I think."

  "You 're impressed with them because you saw a beautiful one today. After that. Suppose you were going to create something else?"

  Julie paused, looking pensive. "We talked about riding a sea-horse in the lake. Something with wings, I suppose, that I could ride."

  "A bird? A mammal?"

  "I don't know. I'd have to think about it."

  "If you chose a bird, it would have to be much larger, of course, than a natural bird. You'd also find that it could not maintain the proportions of any of the species whose genetic matter you were using. Its wings would have to be much larger in proportion to its body. Its head would not have to be much bigger than an eagle's—and so on. When you were through and you were spotted sailing among the clouds, the newspapers would probably call your bird a roc, after the one that carried Sinbad."

  "I see."

  "If you decided on a winged horse instead, it would be Pegasus. I've never yet seen one of those that could actually fly, by the way. A winged human being would be an angel, or if it were more bird-like, with claws and tail feathers and so on, perhaps a harpy. You see, it's quite hard to escape from mythological nomenclature, because it covers so much. People have already imagined all these things. It's just that now we—some of us—can make them come true."

  Julie smiled nervously. "An alligator! I think I'll choose an alligator with wings. I could make him smarter at the same time."

  Anderson puffed out a cloud of smoke. "That's a dragon."

  "Wait, I'll—"

  The door flew open and Dumont came in. Anderson said, "Here's the man who can tell you about recombinant DNA and that sort of thing. I'd only make a hash of it." He stood. "Julie, may I present Henry A. Dumont of Biology, my good friend and occasionally my rival."

  "Friendly rival," Dumont put in.

  "Also the treasurer and technical director of our little society. Dumont, this is Julia Coronell, the lady who's hiding the unicorn."

  For a moment no one spoke. Julie's face was guarded, expressionless save for tension. Then she said, "How did you know?"

  Anderson sat down again, and Dumont took the office's last chair. Anderson said, "You came here because you were concerned about Nick." He paused, and Julie nodded. "But you didn't seem to want to do anything. If Nick was running around while the police looked for him, the situation was urgent; but you told me that story about pumpernickel and let me blather on about fauns and centaurs. You were worried, you were under a considerable strain, but you weren't urging me to get busy and reactivate the group we had looking for Nick this afternoon. When Dumont here called, I was very casual about the whole thing and just asked him to come over and talk. You didn't protest, and I decided that you knew where Nick was already. And that he was safe, at least for the time being."

  "I see," Julie whispered.

  "I don't," Dumont said. "That boy told me he saw the unicorn."

  Anderson nodded. "A friend of yours, Julie?"

  "Yes . . ."

  Dumont said, "Honey, it's nothing to be ashamed of. We 're on your side."

  "You hid Nick," Anderson continued, "after the police dropped their tear gas. He was tame with you, as we saw earlier. He may even have eaten enough of Dumont's bread to calm him down a bit—there was a sedative in it. For a while after that, you were probably too frightened to do anything more; you just lay low. Then the police went away and our search parties gave up, and you went off campus to buy that bread you're holding. On the way back to give it to Nick, you met someone who told you about me."

  Dumont asked, "Was it Ed? The boy who told me he saw the unicorn?"

  Julie s voice was nearly inaudible. "Yes, it was."

  "And between the two of you, you decided it would be smart to start some rumors indicating that Nick was still free and moving in a direction away from the place where you had him hidden." Anderson paused to relight his pipe. "So the first report had him disappear
ing behind the field house. The next one would have put him even farther away, I suppose. But more or less on impulse, you decided that we might help you, so you came up here to wait for me. Anyway, it would be safer for you to take that bread to Nick after dark. All right, we will help you. At least, we'll try. Where is Nick?"

  Ed was no more a boy, actually, than Julie Coronell was a girl—a studious looking young man of nineteen or twenty. He had brought Dumont 's tranquilizer gun, and Dumont had it now, though all of them hoped it would not be needed. Julie led the way, with Anderson beside her and Dumont and Ed behind them. A softness as of rose petals was in the evening air.

  Anderson said, "I've seen you around the campus, haven't I? Graduate school?"

  Julie nodded. "I'm working on my doctorate, and I teach some freshman and sophomore classes. Ed's one of my students. Most of the people I meet seem to think I'm a sophomore or a junior myself. How did you know I wasn't?"

  "The way you're dressed. I guessed, actually. You look young, but you also look like the sort of woman who looks younger than she is."

  "You ought to have been a detective," she told him.

  "Yes, anything but this."

  The sun had set behind the trees of the park, trees whose long shadows had all run together now, flooding the lawns and walks with formless night. Most of the windows in the buildings the four passed were dark.

  "What department?" Anderson asked when Julie said nothing more.

  "English. My dissertation will be on twentieth century American novelists."

  "I should have recognized you, but I'm more than two thousand years behind you."

  "I'm easy to overlook."

  "Let's hope Nick is too." For a moment, Anderson studied the building looming before them. "Why the library?"

  "I've been doing research; they let me have a key. I knew it had just closed, and I couldn't think of anything else." She held up the key.

  A minute or two later, it slid into the lock. The interior was dim but not dark—a scattering of lights, lonely and almost spectral, burned in the recesses of the building, as though the spirits of a few geniuses lingered, still awake.