The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (35 page)

“Perhaps,” she said, “you would
like to know in what way you can help me.”

A light rain had begun. Her
veil caught drops of moisture, like a spider’s web.

I turned away. I did not want
to know, and yet I could not stop listening. As a scientist, and a man, I
wanted to know what she intended.

“I would have liked to bear
children myself. But I cannot. You and I proved that, did we not, Edward? Would
you have liked that, to have had children with me? What would they have been
like, I wonder? Moreau took away my ability to breed with my kind, and could
not give me the ability to breed with yours. Even Dr. Radzinsky was not able to
give me that, although he tried. Somewhere, there is an incompatibility that
goes beyond the anatomical. Perhaps someday your scientists will find it, and
then we will be able to create a true race of Beast Men. But I am impatient. I
want my children to flourish and populate the earth. Surely a natural desire,
according to Mr. Darwin.

“Here, in England, I will
create a clinic, to revive and perfect Moreau’s research. But my clinic will be
no House of Pain. We will incorporate all the technological advances of the
last decade—and the educational advances, since my clinic will also be a
school. Think, Edward! My children will be educated along the latest scientific
lines. Educated to be the inheritors of a new age.”

“What makes you think that I would
finance such a—such a mad scheme? Is it not enough that Moreau did it once? Why
would you wish to create such abominations yourself?”

“Not abominations. Look at me,
Edward. Am I an abomination?”

I did not know how to answer.

“You will finance my mad scheme,
as you call it, for three reasons. First, because you are a gentleman, and a
gentleman cares about his reputation. If you do not provide me with the
financing I require, I will inform your English press. There are two laws,
Edward, that all civilized men obey: not to lie with their mothers or sisters
or daughters, and not to eat the flesh of other men. You have broken the second
of those laws.”

“Why should I care what the
public thinks of me?”

“Because there will be
inquiries. And because nothing will be proven, people will think the worst. You
will become notorious. Wherever you go, people will follow you, to interview
you, to take photographs. Imagine the newspapers! ‘What Mr. Prendick the
cannibal had for breakfast. How it compares with human flesh.’ But second, you
are a scientist. What I am proposing is an experiment. I will bring pumas from
the Americas, young ones, less than two years old. Fine, healthy specimens. I
will operate on them in stages, changing them gradually. Allowing them, at each
stage, to become accustomed to their new forms. Educating them. There will be
no pain. There will be no deformity. My children will be as beautiful as I am.”

I grasped at straws. “Your plan
is impossible. You will never be able to build a clinic like that in England.
Where would you hide? There is no part of the countryside that is uninhabited,
no place obscure enough that your work won’t be observed. You will be found
out.”

She laughed. “I do not propose
to put my clinic in the countryside. No, my clinic will be in the heart of
England, in London itself.”

“But surely the police—”

“There are parts of London
where the police never go. Parts where the inhabitants speak a babble of
language, and everything you want to purchase is to be had, from a girl fresh
from the English countryside to a pipe of opium that will give you distinctly
un-English dreams. I have become familiar with them over the last few years. Do
not worry about the practicalities. Those I have thought of already.”

“And third—I did tell you there
are three reasons—you are a follower of Mr. Darwin. Consider, Edward.” She
turned again to look at the valley below. “The operation of natural selection
is necessary for evolution. Without selective pressure, a species stagnates,
perhaps even degenerates, reverting to atavistic forms. How long has it been
since selective pressure operated on the human species? You have killed all
your predators. How many men are killed by wolves or bears, in Europe? You care
for your poor, your sick, your idiots, your mad, who give birth to more of
their kind, filling your cities Your intelligent classes, who spend so much of
their energy in their work, do not breed. This is not new to you, I know. You
have read it in Nordau, Lombroso. Your very strength and compassion as a
species will be your undoing. You will grow weaker by the year, the decade, the
century. Eventually, like the dodo, you will become extinct. That is the fate
of mankind. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“You once again introduce a
predator. That is what I’m offering you, Edward. Selective predation. A species
that I create, to feed off the weakest among you, to make humanity strong.”

She was mad, I thought. And I
think so still. But there is a kind of reason in madness. Moreau had it, and as
she claimed, she was Moreau’s daughter. He too had the directness, the
simplicity, of a beast.

I have not seen her since that
day on the hillside. The money I send her is deposited into a bank account, and
where it goes from there, I do not know. Do I believe that the creatures she
creates will strengthen rather than weaken mankind? I do not know, but she has
never lied to me. It takes a man to do that.

There was a fourth reason that
she did not mention. Perhaps it was kindness on her part not to mention it. But
I do not think that, in all her interactions with men, she has learned
kindness. Surely she must have known. Sometimes at night I still think of her,
her fingers twining in my hair, her legs tangled in mine, her lips close, so
close, to my throat. I do not think I loved her. But it was a madness that
resembled love, and perhaps I still am mad, because I have not refused her. She
must have known, because as she stood in the doorway, ready to depart, as
respectable as any English lady, she stepped close to me and licked my neck. I
felt the rasp of her tongue.

“Goodbye, Edward,” she said.
“When I am ready, not before, I will invite you to my clinic, and you can see
the first of our children. Yours and mine.”

Yesterday,
in the post, I received her invitation. Will I go? I have not decided. But I am
a scientist, cursed with curiosity. I would like to see what she creates and
whether she is, indeed, a worthy successor to Moreau.

Editor’s Note:

I hesitate to publish this
manuscript, left to me by my late uncle, Edward Prendick, because credulous
members of the public may connect it with the series of brutal murders that is
currently taxing the ingenuity of Scotland Yard. However, Professor Huxley, my
uncle’s former teacher, has asked me to publish it as an addendum to my uncle’s
manuscript of his time on the island. I believe the conversation it records was
a hallucination. It must be remembered that my uncle’s health was severely
affected by the shipwreck that left him the sole inhabitant of an island in the
South Seas, and that at the time of his death, he was attended by an alienist.
I am satisfied that the cause of his death was natural. Heart failure can
strike a comparatively young man, and even if we give no credence to the
fantastical occurrences that he claimed to have witnessed, my uncle must have
suffered a great deal. It is true that upon the execution of his will, his
fortune was found to be significantly diminished. However, there are a number
of possible explanations for the state of his affairs, and we should not draw
conclusions before the investigation into his death is complete. I hope the
public will do justice to the memory of my uncle, who, although disturbed in
mind, was a man of intellectual promise before the shipwreck that embittered
him toward mankind. And I hope the public will dismiss the ridiculous fancies
of Fleet Street, and assist our police in catching the perpetrator of the
Limehouse Murders.

—
Charles Prendick

The Mind of a Pig

Ekaterina Sedia

A first shock of Joel’s life
came when he saw a mirror for the first time. That elaborate affair of glass
and wood was delivered to decorate Cassie’s room, and Joel approached it to
investigate. He had not given much thought to his appearance, but assumed
without ever considering that he looked like the people around him. He was
conscious of some slight differences between himself and others, such as he
walked on four legs, and did not speak. Still, he did not expect his reflection
to be quite so grotesque.

He twitched his snout,
discomfited, and the creature in the mirror did the same. A real snout with a
flat fleshy circle surrounding his nostrils. Joel surveyed slack ears, nothing
at all like Cassie’s, the small eyes hiding in the folds of fat, a long
corpulent body supported by four stubby hoofed legs, and a comma of a tail.
Joel had seen enough picture books to recognize the image. A pig.

He turned his back to the
mirror and trotted away, his cloven hooves clacking on the hardwood floors of
his home. He moved his legs carefully, afraid that an abrupt movement would
shatter his heart, already aching as if from a blow.

Joel pushed a door open with
his forehead and lay in the straw bed of his pen. The pen took up most of the
open porch of a great, old house, and Joel had a view of flowerbeds, bursting
forth with blue of irises and red and black of tulips, and a vast green lawn.
He needed to think.

His discovery, as unsettling as
it was, explained much. He now knew why Cassie and her father talked about him
as if he were not there, and why newspapers were often snatched from under his
nose. Most importantly, he realized why Cassie never acknowledged small signs
of affection he offered. At least, it wasn’t about his personality. It was
about him being a pig.

His ears pricked up, and he
raised his snout to inhale the smell of gas and hot metal. Cassie’s Dad came
home. Normally, Joel was not very interested in the old man—he seemed more of
an aged barnacle appended to Cassie’s loveliness than a being in his own right.
This time, Joel watched him.

Cassie’s Dad heaved his old
body up the steps with the help of his cane, and spoke addressing a young man
with a tape recorder in hand, who followed close behind. “I hope the tour of
the farm assuaged some of your and your readers’ concerns. As you could see,
it’s a perfectly scientific and humane operation.”

“Yes.” The young man stopped
and cocked his head. “But did you have any issues with patients being squeamish
about their transplants? About these organs being grown in pigs?”

The old man rasped a laugh.
“You have to understand that people who need a transplant do not have the
luxury of being squeamish. And think of the alternatives—would you rather
receive a liver extracted from a human corpse?”

The young
man made a small non-committal sound and looked away.

“You’re too young to remember
it, but back in the day...“ Cassie’s Dad looked over the flowerbeds, his
fingers tapping on the railing of the porch. “There was a lot of controversy
over human cloning—human rights activists feared that people will be cloned only
to harvest their organs. That never happened, of course—it is much easier to
grow human organs in pigs, and there’s a whole lot fewer ethical questions.
Animal Righters, of course, made a fuss, but they always do. Most of them don’t
even know what they believe in.”

“Why pigs?”

“They are similar to us.” The
old man smiled, and snapped his fingers at Joel. “Joel, come here, boy.”

Joel trotted up, obedient,
hoping that his dark unease did not reflect on his face.

“Joel, here,” the old man said,
“is a miracle pig. He has a human brain—he’s the only one of his kind. A real
innovation. Hope your paper will enjoy this little factoid.”

The young man rubbed his face.
“A brain? Forgive me, Dr. Kernicke, but a brain transplant reeks of a bad joke.
Why would you need a brain?”

Cassie’s Dad rolled his eyes,
and petted Joel’s sagging head. “Not a whole one. But you know that people
suffer injuries, or—God forbid!—tumors. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a
replacement frontal lobe in case you lost one?”

The young man nodded. “I
suppose. But what about personality?”

Cassie’s Dad shook his head,
impatient. “What personality? He’s a pig. He’s just keeping this brain warm, in
a manner of speaking. It’s a blank slate. A person who receives Joel’s frontal
lobe will eventually develop connections between his brain and the transplant,
and gradually claim it as his own, regaining function as the time goes by.
Brain tissue is just tissue until a human mind shapes it into something
grander.”

The young man turned off his
tape recorder. “Doctor,” he said in a hushed voice, and gave Joel a sideways
look. “How do you know that this pig is not sentient?”

“Because pigs did not evolve
with this brain!” Cassie’s Dad struck the boards of the porch with his cane for
emphasis. “It’s like sewing albatross’ wings on a pigeon—it won’t make him a
better flyer, and chances are that he won’t fly at all. Every animal is made by
evolution, and all parts should fit together to function. Joel’s DNA says that
he’s a pig, and thus he will remain a pig forever, whether we furnish him with
a different brain or not. He has no other human equipment, such as
neurotransmitters and sensory system, and thus he cannot make use of the brain.
Interview is over.”