Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

“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 thought 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.

“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.”