A sudden sadness overtakes me. I feel it now, searching its way through the jungle. The bird stops in mid-song.
“It will try to take you, young sloth.”
“I’m holding fast.”
“Now…now it blows over us…”
The whirlwind has touched me. I hear wailing and moaning. I’m being pulled upward! My little piece of the Animal Soul is being tugged. No! I won’t go!
It pulls at me and I hold firm, with the crying all through my body. A sloth cannot be pulled from his branch. It passes on, leaving me alone.
“That was its first pass, little sloth. It’ll come again.”
“I don’t want to die, Father! Why do I have to?”
“Our great departure time may have come. All the signs indicate that it has, but nonetheless it’s our duty to resist. Hang on now, it comes once more. It’s stronger now. It’s gathered the jaguars to itself. They’ve surrendered. The great cats have all yielded. Now it springs at us…now…”
My limbs are trembling. I feel weak, drained, terrified. It strikes, leaping upon me like the cat, and rushes upward through my body, carrying my little bit of soul in its great teeth. My beautiful jungle! I don’t want to leave. Oh lovely earth, please let me stay!
I hang fast as it leaps away. My blood is roaring, my heart crashing violently in my chest. “Oh, Master, I felt them all, felt the whole Soul rising. The whole Soul—what will happen if it takes me?”
“You won’t be hanging upside down anymore.”
“But will I continue somewhere?”
“Who knows?” The moss parts and I see the raindrop again. It has grown larger and the bits of leaf all around it are wet.
I hear the Soul moving through the jungle corridors, through the galleries and tunnels of our home. It rolls over me again and circles through every part of my body. I’m drawn into the depths of the Soul, into its vast dream. I’ve hung on for countless seasons. I’ve hung on through the ages. I’ll hang on. This is my branch.
But it’s all loosened. The whole thing’s unraveling. So many threads cut today. Our link to the earth is broken. Jungle of happiness! Earth! My paws are slipping away from you. My billionfold claws are weak and trembling. The tail of the dog hangs dead; my horns are cracked, my trunk has been cut.
Ah, forest, my favorite glade! Deep and quiet cave, I shall miss you. And how shall I find you again? This path of my nature took so long to fashion and now—now it is undone, never to be found or fashioned again.
Tremendous, tremendous this Soul, with such secrets yet to unfold, but—the unfolding is over. We made our bid for existence and lost.
Leaving this pillow in the corner, where I went to wash my paws; leaving the sand box under the window where I buried my waste. Leaving the street where I smelled your signs. Turning round, I tremble on the floor, heaving my chest. Springing from the windows, shuddering on the lawn—in the jungle, in the cities, on the mountaintops, I groan.
And I must let go of my branch.
Crawling out from under all this rubbish and smoldering rubble. The bastards burned the laboratory down. I’m lucky to have gotten out alive. But Doctor Rat is made of tough stuff, my friends. I felt an awful tugging on my tail there for a moment and thought I was a goner, but I held onto a bound set of old Newsletters.
Pushing debris out of my way, crawling up over this pile of broken bricks. We’ll have to requisition some funds in a hurry and rebuild the place.
Okay, Rat, just slip under this smoldering timber and…
…out in the moist night air. On the rolling campus lawn. It’s awfully quiet out here. It feels so still. Kind of an eerie feeling. I must make note of it for my Displacement Behavior Paper.
There’s the Central Exercise Drum in the ruins. Still spinning around. No rats in it; it’s just clicking slowly over and over, running down. Still some signals from the intuitive band though. I’d better tune in and see what’s become of the revolution.
Good heavens!
Gone? All of them? They couldn’t be. I’d better change the channel. Pick up a stray dog somewhere and bring him back for the heatstroke study.
Panning the globe, from place to place. Piles of dead animals. Basic models in great heaps, already starting to rot. Get busy with the pickling solution, gentlemen.
This is remarkable. I can’t find a single cur anywhere. Let’s just focus down this Chinese alleyway, behind that restaurant, maybe we’ll find a cat or two to put in the chow mein…
Empty. Not a puss anywhere.
Changing channels again…switch to India, they’ve got loads of monkeys there…in on Delhi, check out the trapping agencies…trappers pulling out their hair, wringing their hands, tossing ashes in their eyes…dead monkeys everywhere…not a tail stirring.
Try the education network—Learned Professors looking around dumbly…graduate assistants registering shock…stupefied stares. Every rat, every cat, every dog, every rabbit, every mouse, every mole, every chimp, every guinea pig dead!
“WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO OUR HEATSTROKE STUDY!”
No answer. The line is dead.
Exercise Drum coming to a stop, its momentum gone. The signal is fading away. Just a faint little blip in the middle of the screen, getting smaller and smaller, like a satellite disappearing into space.
Surely there must be a titmouse somewhere. Let me just spin the drum once more and see what I come up with…
Empty. The place is deserted. There’s not an animal anywhere on earth. Old Doctor Rat is the only one left.
Crawling over the stones, and into the shadows. The silence is rather unnerving (cf. Musgrave and Hamilton, The Extinct Species). Over. Kaput.
I hear people talking on campus; they sound unusually quiet. Humanity is still functioning. But no scurrying little feet in the grass. No softly sliding feline shadows. Not a single meow, not a chirp, not a solitary bark in the whole of creation. You can feel the emptiness out there: the Final Solution gives you a sort of lonely feeling.
And I haven’t even got a place to live. Maybe I can find an old gopher hole somewhere.
Going along the sidewalk, dragging my tail.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLIAM KOTZWINKLE is a young writer who has already produced five books of fiction and nine children’s books. His underground popularity is large and has been growing steadily. Among his books are Elephant Bangs Train, The Fan Man and Swimmer in the Secret Sea. Doctor Rat, an absolutely wonderful novel, both an indictment and a lyric celebration, will be the book that breaks him out “above ground.” His most recent novel is Fata Morgana. Mr. Kotzwinkle has lived for several years in Canada.
Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
DOCTOR RAT
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About the Author
Doctor Rat Page 18
