The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (34 page)

“After the
surgery, I had no more money, and money is necessary in this civilized world of
yours. But I found that men will pay money for the company of a beautiful
woman. And I am beautiful, am I not, Edward? I should be grateful to the Beast
Master. I was his masterpiece.”

She smiled, and I did not like
it. Her canines were still longer than they should have been. Sometimes, when
we lay together, she had bitten me. I wanted to believe she had done so by
accident, but had she?

“And so I began to study. In
this England of yours, a woman cannot attend universities, but she can attend
scientific lectures. She can read at the British Museum. And if she is
beautiful, she can ask as many questions as she wishes, and important men are
flattered by her interest. I would venture, Edward, that I am now more knowledgeable
about biology than you are. I intend to put that knowledge to use. But I need
your help. I have come here,” her hand swept to indicate the hills around us,
the birds that were flying above, the clouds floating against the grey sky,
“with the most vulgar of motives. I require money. You see, I have a particular
project in mind. The surgeon who repaired me, who erased the scars that Moreau
had left, is a Russian émigré, a Jew driven out of his country by religious
persecution. How fond your species is of persecutions! For two years I have
worked with him, learning everything he could teach me. I am now, he has been
generous enough to say, even more skilled than he is. Your women who are
agitating for the right to vote believe that they should have professions other
than marriage. I too wish to have a profession. I propose to follow in my
father’s footsteps and become a vivisector.”

I stared at her. Gazing over
the hills, with the wind whipping her skirts back and tossing her veil, she
looked like the figurehead on the prow of a ship. But where was she headed?
Moreau’s work had brought us once to disaster. Was she now truly planning to
continue what he had begun?

After his death, the more
peaceable Beast Men had developed the habit of coming to the enclosure to trade
what they grew in their gardens for our flour and salt. Twice a week they came,
crowding into the enclosure, like an English market crossed with a menagerie,
or a Renaissance painting of some level of Dante’s Inferno.

Montgomery should have noticed
that Nero and the Wolf-Bear Tiberius had entered the enclosure. M’Ling should
have been guarding the gate, but his attention was elsewhere. The Beast Men had
begun adopting our vices, for which Montgomery was in no small measure to
blame. He had taught them the use of tobacco, which he traded for food, and to
pass the time he had whittled a pair of dice, with which they gambled for
onions, turtle eggs, whatever the Beast Men had brought to trade. That morning,
M’Ling was gambling with the Beast Men.

“Why does she carry a whip?” I
heard the shout and went to the window. I usually avoided these market days. I
still found it disconcerting to be in the company of so many of Moreau’s
creations.

Montgomery stood by the door of
the storeroom, which held our barrels of tobacco, flour, biscuits, salted meat.
Next to him stood Catherine, dressed as he was, with a gun in her holster and a
whip tucked into her belt. All around stood the Beast Men with the goods that
they had brought, and in the back, close to the gate, stood the Hyena-Swine.

“She is one of us, one of the
made. Why does she carry a gun? Why does she carry a whip? Let her join her own
people.”

The Beast Men stood, staring,
and I could see the inquisitive look in their eyes.

“Why does she not come to us?”
said Catullus, the Satyr. “We have few females. Why does she not come to live
in our huts, and work in our gardens, like the other females?”

“Yes,” said the Ape Man. “Let
her live with us, with us, with us! She can be my mate.”

Then others spoke and said that
she could be their mate as well.

I could see Montgomery looking
puzzled. He had been up late drinking, the night before, and was still nursing
a hangover. He could not understand this rebellion among the usually peaceable
Beast Men. From where he stood, he could not see the Hyena-Swine.

I could see Catherine’s hand on
her gun.

The Beast Men began arguing
among themselves, each claiming her. Moreau had never made enough Beast Women,
and they were constantly trying to lure the ones they had away from each other.
One pushed another. Soon there would be a fight.

I stepped through the doorway,
into the enclosure.

“The Master, who has gone to
live among the stars, and watches you from above, has intended her for another
purpose. She will not be any of your mates. She will be without a mate, but
will bear a child that will perpetuate your race. That is the purpose for which
he has created her. She will be the mother of a new race of men. Bow to her,
who is dedicated to such a high purpose!”

They stared at me.

“Bow!” I said, raising my gun.
I could see the Hyena-Swine slinking through the gate.

One by one, reluctantly, they
inclined their heads.

“Hail to the holy mother,” said
the Ape Man. He had always been sillier than the rest.

“Well then,” I said. “You may
continue to trade. There will be no punishment today, despite your
disobedience.”

That night, Montgomery lit the
bonfire. He lit it every night. If there was a ship sailing within sight of the
island, we did not want it to miss us. Sometimes the Beast Men came and danced
by the light of the bonfire. “A regular corroboree,” Montgomery called it.

“Catherine,”
he called, after the fire was lit. I could see him standing in the enclosure,
with the full moon behind him, larger than it ever is in England. “Come to the
dance. There’s a regular crowd of them tonight.”

“Not
tonight,” she answered. “Tonight I wish to speak with Edward.”

“Damn Edward. Come on,
Catherine.” I realized that he had already started drinking, or perhaps had
never stopped.

I did not hear her answer, but
he shouted, “All right then, damn you!” And then I heard the gate crash shut.

“He’s gone,” she said a moment
later, standing in my doorway.

“What did you want to speak to
me about?”

She came closer. She had a
smell about her, not unpleasant but particularly, I thought, feline.

“Do you think he had a purpose
for me?”

“Who?”

“Moreau. You can see that I’m
made—differently from the others. My hands—he must have taken particular care.”

He hands were on my shoulders.
I could feel her claws through my shirt.

“Am I not well made, Edward?”

I looked down into her eyes,
dark in the darkness. I don’t know what possessed me. “You are—divinely made.”

Where my shirt was open, she
licked my chest, then my neck. She was almost as tall as I was. I could not help
remembering Moreau’s neck, torn open.

He had done his work well.
Standing on an English hillside, watching her with her veil blown back by the
wind, I shuddered at the memory of her brown thighs, with a down on them softer
than the hair of any woman.

She smiled at me, and despite
my sweater and mackintosh, I felt cold.

We were lying together in a
tangle of sheets when we heard the shot.

“Get your gun,” she said.

We ran out, me in my trousers,
she in Montgomery’s shirt. As we passed the storeroom, she disappeared
suddenly, then reappeared with an ammunition belt over her shoulder.

On the beach, around the
bonfire, Beast Men were dancing. There was a throb in the air, and after a
moment I realized that it was a drum. Someone—it looked like the Sayer of the Law—
was keeping time while the Beast Men turned and leaped and shook their hands in
the air, and shouted each in his own way—some like the grunting of a pig, some
like the barking of a dog, one caterwauling. I will never forget that sight,
watching from the shadowed dunes while the Beast Men capered together and the
Puma Woman stood, with her gun in her hand, the ammunition belt slung over her
shoulder, at my side.

“The fire is larger tonight,”
she said. “What are they burning?”

I looked again, more carefully.
“The boats!” They had not been large enough to carry us away from the island,
but they had at least been tangible signs that escape was possible.

Without thinking, I ran among
them. “Damn you to hell! Damn you all to hell! What beast among you—”

One of the Beast Men turned
toward me. I started back with a cry. He was wearing a mask that made him look
like a gorilla. But the eyes behind it were Montgomery’s. The other Beast Men
stopped, stumbling into one another in confusion.

“What the hell—”

“I’m the—the Gorilla Man. See?”
He began to caper about, with the stooping gate, the hanging arms, of a
gorilla.

The other Beast Men laughed. I
could see the firelight on their teeth.

“Drunk! You’re all drunk! It’s
disgusting—”

“Come on, old stick-in-the-mud
Prendick. Old hypocrite Prendick. Having your fun with the Cat. I deserve some
fun too, don’t you think?”

“Come on, Montgomery,” I said.
I tried to grab him, but he swung at me, punching me in the mouth. He could
have hit harder had he not lost his balance, but I tasted blood. And then I saw
a gleaming pair of eyes, and then another, staring at me. The Wolf-Bear was
there, as was the Hyena-Swine, and with the instinctive reaction of a predator,
the Hyena-Swine leaped at me.

I heard a crack. The
Hyena-Swine fell at my feet. Then another crack, and another, and more Beast
Men fell. They began screaming, running toward the darkness of the jungle. I
thought I would be deafened by the cacophony or crushed as they ran. But the
last of them vanished into the jungle, and suddenly there was silence. I was
still standing, alone. At my feet lay the body of the Hyena-Swine. Beyond him
lay M’Ling, a Wolf Woman, one of the Pig Men, and the Gorilla Man, Montgomery.

“You killed him,” I said.

“He became one of them,” she
said, out of the darkness.

I did not answer. Silently, I
turned, intending to walk back to the enclosure. It was a mass of flames. I
heard a scream that I though might come from one of the Beast Men, until I
realized that I was the one screaming. For the second time that night, I began
to run.

We saved nothing. There was
nothing left to save. We had lost our supplies, and worse, we had lost the rest
of our bullets. After the ones that Catherine had taken ran out, our guns would
be useless.

“One of us must have overturned
the lamp,” she said. She was, as always, perfectly calm. The only evidence I
had seen of her anger had been Moreau’s throat, or what was left of it.

What could I say to her? If I
had overturned the lamp, it had been by accident. But she, so agile—could she
have done it deliberately? I hated her then, more than I had hated Moreau. If I
thought I could have, I would have killed her. But I did not want to die
Moreau’s death, to be buried, or worse, on that island of beasts that looked
like men.

When I remember it now, I
realize that I must have overturned the lamp. Montgomery had burned the boats
to revenge himself upon me, but she had no use for revenge. Her motives were
always simple, logical. What she wanted, she obtained directly, not with human
indirection. Although she looked and laughed at me like an English lady, she
still thought with the mind of a beast.

And so began the longer part of
our stay on the island. Montgomery’s body we burned, but the other bodies...
She was a predator, and slowly, unwillingly, I fell in with her ways. We hunted
together, and with practice my vision became keener, although never, of course,
equal to hers. I insisted on cooking our food, although she laughed at me. I
would not watch her when she ate it fresh from the kill. We drank from the
stream, sucking the water up. Our clothes grew ragged and hung on our brown
hides. I lay with her in the cave we called our home, hating her, hating what I
had become, but unable to leave her. Even now, I remember her touch, the rasp of
her tongue on my skin, the gold of her eyes as she stared down at me and said,
“What are you thinking, Ape Man?”

“Don’t call me that!”

She would laugh and push her
nose against me like a cat that wants to be stroked, and make a sound in her
throat that was neither a purr nor a growl.

One day, I was walking along
the beach, scavenging what I could, crabs, clams, seaweed. We were using our
bullets judiciously, but they were beginning to run out. Soon we would be
reduced to hunting like beasts. I would become like her. I saw something
floating toward me. A sail! But the boat reeled, like a drunken sailor. It was
the boat I have described in my book, with the captain and the first mate of
the
Ipecacuanha
sitting aboard, dead. This might be my only chance to escape
the island. If I died on the ocean, at least I died as a man.

I stepped into the boat. I was
certain, then, that I would never see her again.