Fear Nothing

Page 29

Mungojerrie hissed again, somewhat more ferociously, and again Orson flinched, and then I swear the cat smiled or came as close to smiling as any cat can.
Stranger yet, Orson appeared to break into a wide grin—which requires no imagination to picture because all dogs are able to grin. He was panting happily, grinning at the smiling cat, as though their confrontation had been an amusing joke.
“I ask you, son, who wouldn’t want to learn such a thing?” said Roosevelt.
“Who indeed?” I replied numbly.
“So Gloria taught me, and it took a frustratingly long time, months and months, but I eventually got as good at it as she was. The first big hurdle is believing you can actually do it. Putting aside your doubt, your cynicism, all your preconceived notions about what’s possible and what isn’t. Most of all, hardest of all, you have to stop worrying about looking foolish, ’cause fear of being humiliated really limits you. Lots of folks could never get past all that, and I’m sort of surprised that I got past it myself.”
Shifting forward in his chair, Orson leaned over the table and bared his teeth at Mungojerrie.
The cat’s eyes widened with fear.
Silently but threateningly, Orson gnashed his teeth.
Wistfulness filled Roosevelt’s deep voice: “Sloopy died three years later. God, how I grieved for him. But what a fascinating and wonderful three years they were, being so in tune with him.”
Teeth still bared, Orson growled softly at Mungojerrie, and the cat whimpered. Orson growled again, the cat bawled a pitiful meow of purest fear—and then both grinned.
“What the hell is going on here?” I wondered.
Orson and Mungojerrie seemed to be perplexed by the nervous tremor in my voice.
“They’re just having fun,” Roosevelt said.
I blinked at him.
In the candlelight, his face shone like darkly stained and highly polished teak.
“Having fun mocking their stereotypes,” he explained.
I couldn’t believe I was hearing him correctly. Considering how completely I must be misperceiving his words, I was going to need a high-pressure hose and a plumber’s drain snake to clean out my ears. “Mocking their stereotypes?”
“Yes, that’s right.” He bobbed his head in confirmation. “Of course they wouldn’t put it in those terms, but that’s what they’re doing. Dogs and cats are supposed to be mindlessly hostile. These guys are having fun mocking that expectation.”
Now Roosevelt was grinning at me as stupidly as the dog and the cat were grinning at me. His lips were so dark red that they were virtually black, and his teeth were as big and white as sugar cubes.
“Sir,” I told him, “I take back what I said earlier. After careful reconsideration, I’ve decided you’re totally awesomely crazy, whacked-out to the max.”
He bobbed his head again, continuing to grin at me. Suddenly, like the darkling beams of a black moon, lunacy rose in his face. He said, “You wouldn’t have any damn trouble believing me if I were white,” and as he snarled the final word, he slammed one massive fist into the table so hard that our coffee cups rattled in their saucers and nearly tipped over.
If I could have reeled backward while in a chair, I would have done so, because his accusation stunned me. I had never heard either of my parents use an ethnic slur or make a racist statement; I’d been raised without prejudice. Indeed, if there was an ultimate outcast in this world, it was me. I was a minority all to myself, a minority of one: the Nightcrawler, as certain bullies had called me when I was a little kid, before I’d ever met Bobby and had someone who would stand beside me. Though not an albino, though my skin was pigmented, I was stranger, in many people’s eyes, than Bo Bo the DogFaced Boy. To some I was merely unclean, tainted, as if my genetic vulnerability to ultraviolet light could be passed to others with a sneeze, but some people feared and despised me more than they would fear or despise a three-eyed Toad Man in any carnival freak show from sea to shining sea, if only because I lived next door.
Half rising out of his chair, leaning across the table, shaking a fist as big as a cantaloupe, Roosevelt Frost spoke with a hatred that astonished and sickened me: “Racist! You mealy racist bastard!”
I could barely find my voice. “W-when did race ever matter to me? How could it ever matter to me?”
He looked as if he would reach across the table, tear me out of my chair, and strangle me until my tongue unraveled to my shoes. He bared his teeth and growled at me, growled like a dog, very much like a dog, suspiciously like a dog.
“What the hell is going on here?” I asked again, but this time I found myself asking the dog and cat.
Roosevelt growled at me again, and when I only gaped stupidly at him, he said, “Come on, son, if you can’t call me a name, at least give me a little growl. Give me a little growl. Come on, son, you can do it.”
Orson and Mungojerrie watched me expectantly.
Roosevelt growled once more, giving his snarl an interrogatory inflection at the end, and finally I growled back at him. He growled louder than before, and I growled louder, too.
Smiling broadly, he said, “Hostility. Dog and cat. Black and white. Just having a little fun mocking stereotypes.”
As Roosevelt settled into his chair again, my bewilderment began to give way to a tremulous sense of the miraculous. I was aware of a looming revelation that would rock my life forever, expose dimensions of the world that I could not now imagine; but although I strained to grasp it, this understanding remained elusive, tantalizingly just beyond the limits of my reach.
I looked at Orson. Those inky, liquid eyes.
I looked at Mungojerrie.
The cat bared his teeth at me.
Orson bared his, too.
A faint cold fear thrilled through my veins, as the Bard of Avon would put it, not because I thought the dog and cat might bite me but because of what this amused baring of teeth implied. Not just fear shivered through me, either, but also a delicious chill of wonder and giddy excitement.
Although such an act would have been out of character for him, I actually wondered if Roosevelt Frost had spiked the coffee. Not with brandy. With hallucinogenics. I was simultaneously disoriented and clearer of mind than I’d ever been, as if I were in a heightened state of consciousness.
The cat hissed at me, and I hissed at the cat.
Orson growled at me, and I growled at him.
In the most astonishing moment of my life to this point, we sat around the dinette table, grinning men and beasts, and I was reminded of those cute but corny paintings that were popular for a few years: scenes of dogs playing poker. Only one of us was a dog, of course, and none of us had cards, so the painting in my mind’s eye didn’t seem to apply to this situation, and yet the longer I dwelled on it, the closer I came to revelation, to epiphany, to understanding all of the ramifications of what had happened at this table in the past few minutes—
—and then my train of thought was derailed by a beeping that arose from the electronic security equipment in the hutch beside the table.
As Roosevelt and I turned to look at the video monitor, the four views on the screen resolved into one. The automated system zoomed in on the intruder and revealed it in the eerie, enhanced light of a night-vision lens.
The visitor stood in the eddying fog at the aft end of the port finger of the boat slip in which the Nostromo was berthed. It looked as though it had stepped directly out of the Jurassic Period into our time: perhaps four feet tall, pterodactyl-like, with a long wicked beak.
My mind was so full of feverish speculations related to the cat and the dog—and I was so unnerved by the other events of the night—that I was prepared to see the uncanny in the ordinary, where it did not in fact exist. My heart raced. My mouth soured and went dry. If I hadn’t been frozen by shock, I would have bolted to my feet, knocking my chair over. Given another five seconds, I still might have managed to make a fool of myself, but I was saved from mortification by Roosevelt. He was either by nature more deliberative than I was or he had lived so long with the uncanny that he was quick to differentiate genuine eldritch from faux eldritch.
“Blue heron,” he said. “Doing a little night fishing.”
I was as familiar with the great blue heron as with any bird that thrived in and around Moonlight Bay. Now that Roosevelt had named our visitor, I recognized it for what it was.
Cancel the call to Mr. Spielberg. There is no movie here.
In my defense, I would note that for all its elegant physiology and its undeniable grace, this heron has a fierce predatory aura and a cold reptilian gaze that identify it as a survivor of the age of dinosaurs.
The bird was poised at the very edge of the slip finger, peering intently into the water. Suddenly it bent forward, its head darted down, its beak stabbed into the bay, it snatched up a small fish, and it threw its head back, swallowing the catch. Some die that others may live.
Considering how hastily I had ascribed preternatural qualities to this ordinary heron, I began to wonder if I was attributing more significance to the recent episode with the cat and the dog than it deserved. Certainty gave way to doubt. The onrushing, macking wave of epiphany abruptly receded without breaking, and a churly-churly tide of confusion slopped over me again.
Drawing my attention from the video display, Roosevelt said, “In the years since Gloria Chan taught me interspecies communication, which is basically just being a cosmically good listener, my life has been immeasurably enriched.”
“Cosmically good listener,” I repeated, wondering if Bobby would still be able to execute one of his wonderfully entertaining riffs on a nutball phrase like that. Maybe his experiences with the monkeys had left him with a permanent deficit of both sarcasm and skepticism. I hoped not. Although change might be a fundamental principle of the universe, some things were meant to be timeless, including Bobby’s insistence on a life that allowed only for things as basic as sand, surf, and sun.
“I’ve greatly enjoyed all the animals that have come to me over the years,” Roosevelt said as drily as if he were a veterinarian reminiscing about a career in animal medicine. He reached out to Mungojerrie and stroked his head, scratched behind his ears. The cat leaned into the big man’s hand and purred. “But these new cats I’ve been encountering the last two years or so…they open a far more exciting dimension of communication.” He turned to Orson: “And I’m sure that you are every bit as interesting as the cats.”
Panting, tongue lolling, Orson assumed an expression of perfect doggy vacuousness.
“Listen, dog, you have never fooled me,” Roosevelt assured him. “And after your little game with the cat a moment ago, you might as well give up the act.”
Ignoring Mungojerrie, Orson looked down at the three biscuits in front of him, on the table.
“You can pretend to be all dog appetite, pretend nothing’s more important to you than those tasty treats, but I know differently.”
Gaze locked on the biscuits, Orson whined longingly.
Roosevelt said, “It was you who brought Chris here the first time, old pup, so why did you come if not to talk?”
On Christmas Eve, more than two years ago, not a month before my mother died, Orson and I had been roaming the night, according to our usual habits. He had been only a year old then. As a puppy, he had been frisky and playful, but he had never been as hyper as most very young dogs. Nevertheless, at the age of one, he was not always able to control his curiosity and not always as well-behaved as he ultimately became. We were on the outdoor basketball court behind the high school, my dog and I, and I was shooting baskets. I was telling Orson that Michael Jordan should be damn glad that I’d been born with XP and was unable to compete under lights, when the mutt abruptly sprinted away from me. Repeatedly I called to him, but he only paused to glance back at me, then trotted away again. By the time I realized that he was not going to return, I didn’t even have time to snug the ball into the net bag that was tied to the handlebars of my bicycle. I pedaled after the fugitive fur ball, and he led me on a wild chase: street to alley to street, through Quester Park, down to the marina, and ultimately along the docks to the Nostromo. Although he rarely barked, that night Orson flew into a barking frenzy as he leaped off the dock directly onto the porch-like afterdeck of the cruiser, and by the time I braked to a skidding halt on the damp dock planks, Roosevelt had come out of the boat to cuddle and calm the dog.
“You want to talk,” Roosevelt told Orson now. “You originally came here wanting to talk, but I suspect you just don’t trust me.”
Orson kept his head down, his eyes on the biscuits.
“Even after two years, you half suspect maybe I’m hooked up with the people at Wyvern, and you’re not going to be anything but the most doggie of dogs until you’re sure of me.”
Sniffing the biscuits, once more licking the table around them, Orson seemed not even to be aware that anyone was speaking to him.
Turning his attention to me, Roosevelt said, “These new cats, they come from Wyvern. Some are first-generation, the original escapees, and some are second-generation who were born in freedom.”
“Lab animals?” I asked.
“The first generation were, yes. They and their offspring are different from other cats. Different in lots of ways.”
“Smarter,” I said, remembering the behavior of the monkeys.
“You know more than I thought.”
“It’s been a busy night. How smart are they?”
“I don’t know how to calibrate that,” he said, and I could see that he was being evasive. “But they’re smarter and different in other ways, too.”
“Why? What was done to them out there?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“How’d they get loose?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Why haven’t they been rounded up?”
“Beats me.”
“No offense, sir, but you’re a bad liar.”
“Always have been,” Roosevelt said with a smile. “Listen, son, I don’t know everything, either. Only what the animals tell me. But it’s not good for you to know even that much. The more you know, the more you’ll want to know—and you’ve got your dog and those friends to worry about.”
“Sounds like a threat,” I said without animosity.
When he shrugged his immense shoulders, there should have been a low thunder of displaced air. “If you think I’ve been co-opted by them at Wyvern, then it’s a threat. If you believe I’m your friend, then it’s advice.”
Although I wanted to trust Roosevelt, I shared Orson’s doubt. I found it hard to believe that this man was capable of treachery. But here on the weird side of the magical looking-glass, I had to assume that every face was a false face.