Doctor Rat
William Kotzwinkle
There has never been a rat like Doctor Rat, Ph.D. Frenzied survivor of medicine’s most vicious experiments; brilliant eunuch; insane prophet of progress through genocide.
DOCTOR RAT
is sheer horror, pure joy, a one-rodent crusade. He’s man’s best friend… Nature’s worst enemy…and the world’s maddest Messiah. He’s an experience you’ll never forget.
“Bill Kotzwinkle is one of the few American writers who is in complete control of his materials and his materials seem to come from somewhere deep down…”
—Kurt Vonnegut. Jr.
This low-priced Bantam Book
has been completely reset in a type face
designed for easy reading, and was printed
from new plates. It contains the complete
text of the original hard-cover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.
RLI: VLM 8 (VLR 5-8)
IL 9+
DOCTOR RAT
A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
Knopf edition published May 1976
Bantam edition / September 1977
Portions of this novel originally appeared in REDBOOK magazine.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1971, 1976 by William Kotzwinkle.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
201 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. 10022.
ISBN 0-553-10382-2
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
* * *
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10019.
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
In the colony I’m known as Doctor Rat…
We all smelled it…
Deceitful dog…
The wild dogs, then, are our leaders…
Doctor Rat, Doctor Rat…
My front paws are tied…
Oh, you disgusting dog…
We lift our heads and howl…
Pure bile, fellow rats, that’s what this talk of freedom is…
We live in eternal day…
Chicken manure, fellow rats…
We’ve got to recruit the dogs…
Sweet Jumping Dormice…
Now, dogs, through this stream…
These rebel broadcasts are so unnerving…
I slept in the cave of the ancients…
What a pile of dog shit this is…
We stand, nervously waiting…
Fellow rats, please, if you have any legitimate complaints…
I was born in this big room…
The goddamn rebel wheels have suddenly stopped…
I, the hyena, watch the entrance of the imperial bird…
I’m temporarily in command of the microscope stand…
On Vulture Peak, the eagle sits…
First we’ll dismantle the cisternal puncture stand…
And now I see them coming…
How I would love to whip up a good hundred percent Lethal Dose…
The eagles are departing on by one…
Looks like old Doc Rat has finally…
I am a giant of the waves…
I’ve got to climb up this icy thermos…
I’m John Downing for the BBC…
What a lot of filthy bilge…
Blast…
This is the moment…
Whale blubber…
Captain Black, have you ever seen…
Intoxicating wheel of whirling rats…
I hear you, sea maids…
It’s bright midmorning…
Oh Jesus, woe is me…
The family wakes…
Excuse me…
Favorite tusk, on the right…
I move along quietly…
Come on, Mossy Sloth…
Hup bup bareeep four…
Where is the meeting going to be…
Tunneling my way out of this burrow…
Slowly, I make my way across the great plain…
Claude Bernard, give me your blessing…
Come along, Honey Badger…
The Rebel Militia thunders past me…
Banana mice, can you hear me…
These animals yapping…
Mr. President, as you know…
We sit and groom each other…
The exercise wheel is slowing down…
The Wildlife Department says…
The enemy patrols have all passed by…
Man is coming…
The dinitrophenol explodes…
This is Able Baker One…
Run, cub, run…
Ed Hanson for CBS here…
Doctor Rat…
My shell has been…
John Cooke for CBS News…
Yikes…
My old tusks are lowered…
Here at our special CBS Control Center…
I lie in the great plain…
They’ll make shoes…
Sergeant, what’s moving…
I lower my horn…
I think I’d better throw some…
Your unicorn…
As president of the Toshido Fisheries…
I crawled to the mountaintop…
For CBS in England…
I, the hyena, crawl to my water dish…
Surpassing Sloth…
Crawling out from under all this…
In the colony I’m known as Doctor Rat. Having been part of this laboratory so long and having studied so carefully, it’s only right I be given some mark of distinction other than the tattoo on the inside of my ear, a mark that all the other rats have too. Some of them have tattoos and V-shaped wedges cut out of their ears. Some even have three or four wedges cut out of their ears, but that doesn’t mean they are as learned as I. It simply means they have had the liver removed (one wedge), the liver and pituitary gland removed (two wedges), liver, pituitary and pineal glands removed (three wedges), and so forth. After they remove your heart, no more wedges are needed, ha ha!
Then they just bottle your bones, bottle your bones.
But I’ve come to enjoy the smell of formaline—a 5% solution is satisfactory for removing all the soft parts of a rat’s body. Yes, the smell is pleasing to my nose because I know the bones aren’t mine.
From my platform here in the maze, I can watch the whole procedure—a dead rat is now being dunked in the formaline. Soon all the soft parts of his body will fall away. Then a simple solution of sodium carbonate, bleaching powder, and water is sufficient to take off the rest of any muscles or fat left hanging. The expense is not great. To the rat involved, of course, the expense is complete, but what does he care, he’s free!
Death is freedom, that’s my slogan. I do what I can for my fellow rats, giving them the best advice. For after all is said and done, the Final Solution (5% formaline) is death, and death is freedom.
My own case is not unusual. I was driven mad in the mazes. The primary symptoms of shivering, whirling, and biting have all passed now, but I’ve been left with the curiously mad practice of writing songs and poetry. Obviously this is somewhat out of place in a scientific atmosphere and I do my best to suppress the tendency, giving all my attention to writing learned, factual papers. I like to think they’re the very latest word in animal behavior.
Well, why s
houldn’t they be? I’m intimate with all the animal behavior programs. There’s an interesting demonstration going on in the lab at the moment: A young rat has just been placed on a small metal stand. His back paws have been pierced by thumb tacks which hold them in place nicely; his front paws are raised onto the metal stand and tied there, so he’ll remain in an upright position. His eyes dart about. I can feel the racing of his heart, and I call to him, giving him moral support.
“Don’t worry, fellow rat, it won’t take long.”
“What are they doing to me!”
“Nothing that won’t be done to all of us, sooner or later, dear brother. Remember the slogan, death is freedom.”
“I don’t want to die!”
The Learned Professor who directs the many and varied experiments in our lab has now stepped up to the stand. Carefully, coolly, he makes the cisternal puncture, draining out the rat’s spinal fluid. The rat wants to die now, I assure you.
Death is freedom, brother!
Now bottle his bones, bottle his bones.
His spinal fluid is being examined by one of our graduate assistants and now the assistant is pouring it down the sink. He’s getting better at this experiment. It’s part of my work to spot the promising young scientists and feature them in my Newsletter. At first, this lad’s hands were nervous and trembling. He looked a little like a young rat about to be castrated—those weighing more than 30 grams are discarded at birth. But after practicing on fifty-two rats, the boy is really solid. With a smile of accomplishment he washes out his test tube.
Now over here, in a thermos bottle of ice, you’ll see several young rats being cooled to two degrees below zero centigrade.
“Doctor Rat, we’re f-f-f-freezing!”
“That is correct, my friends, and soon you’ll be c-c-c-castrated, as I am. But you won’t feel a thing. Your nuts will be numb and they’ll come off without a hitch.”
“Please, Doctor Rat, h-h-h-help us!”
“My dear friends, don’t worry. After your b-b-b-balls are removed, you’ll get your p-p-p-picture in the Newsletter, and it goes all over the world.”
In this way, I spread good cheer throughout the lab, helping my fellow rats to understand the important role they play in global affairs.
I should now like to sing “Three Blind Rats.” It’s part of the experimental program of music that’s being channeled toward certain rats, to make them more docile and sweet. Several of them are indeed beginning to nuzzle up to each other, one of them even executing a light-fantastic tripping of his tail, in time to the beat.
In the cage beside them, we actually have three blind rats. In fact, we have twenty-three blind rats, part of a magnificent new experiment initiated by a very ambitious student, whom I’m featuring in this month’s Newsletter. He’s a sensitive chap and it was his exquisite sensitivity that caused him to dream up the item that’s become the latest rage here at the lab: the fabulous removal of the eggs from a female rat’s body and the grafting of them to different parts of a male rat’s body—to the tail, to the ear, to the stomach. And for the past twenty-three days, he’s been grafting them to their eyeballs! So now it’s time we sang that promising young scientist a song. I’m stepping to the center of the maze and climbing the Reward Ladder from which I can be clearly seen by all.
“Brother and Sister Rats, members of the choir, I should like us all to sing ‘Three Blind Rats,’ as part of our research program. Sing:
Three Blind Rats
Eyeballs gone
See how they run
See how they run
We all run after the graduate life
And cut off your balls with a carving knife
Did you ever see such a grant in your life
For Three Blind Rats!”
The voices of the rats in the Hemorrhagic Sore Cage are truly well trained. You will observe one of them being pickled in a few moments. If left too long in the Final Solution the smaller bones will disintegrate. But if taken out in time, they can be scraped and brushed until they’re shining clean, and the Learned Professor likes to see that. Good clean bones every time. It gives him the feeling of a job completely and thoroughly done.
Where was I? Oh yes, that young man with the rat’s eyeball. He’s undoubtedly going to have one of the most unusual papers of the year. It ranks with removing the stomach and connecting the esophagus with the duodenum.
Is that a scream I hear? Oh do, oh do, oh do, oh duodenum, with decapitation as the terminal procedure. I want every one of you to make sure that you die calmly, without any show of fear or twitching, in order that the young scientists will be able to dispense with you neatly and quickly. Remember X-rays can be taken of the rat after its sacrifice by slicing the head with a sharp saw or razor, after which we’ll be cutting up your carcass into four parts with a cleaver.
Isn’t that a scream?
Is that a scream I hear?
Yes, it is, just down the row of cages. Shall we move along and take a few notes?
“Help, help!”
“Please, young fellow, there’s no need to get so worked up about your little contribution to science. Have a bit of pressed biscuit before you die. Eat hearty and remember—death is freedom!”
“What are they doing to me, Doctor Rat?”
“Let me just check my notes…yes, here we are. You’ll be the tenth rat this week to have his brains sucked out by a pneumatic tube.”
“Help, help!”
I comfort my fellow rats where I can. It requires psychological understanding, of course. And having been driven insane, I hold the necessary degree in psychology.
We all smelled it. Every dog in the area suddenly had it in his nose. I was outside, just taking my morning run. My master had always let me have this, an hour or so when I might roam around the neighborhood, but always within whistling distance. Whenever I heard that whistle I went running back, for a delicious bone. But this morning it was different.
There are many smells in the world, some good, some bad, but there is only one smell like this, only one smell that absolutely cannot be denied, so sweetly satisfying is it.
It isn’t a smell from the gutter or from food or from the heat of a female; it isn’t from plants or water or rich black soil. I was padding along down the alleyway when I realized it was in the air. Where was it coming from? I lifted my nose, turned slowly around, finding its direction.
I followed it. Not to follow would have been impossible. I dropped everything and ran. Marvelous bones, hearty breakfasts, loving caresses—none of them could compare to this scent, so familiar and yet so fleeting. Don’t lose it, don’t lose it, any of you. Smell it now—there, around the corner, there, down the street, keep after it, keep chasing, keep picking it out from all the other smells. You must go through fire and water to stay with this scent.
Through the town—out of alleyways and along the streets, back into the alleyways, twisting, turning. There are certain smells that resemble this, but only vaguely, and lacking the overwhelming authority that speaks to us now. The smell of burning candles, the smell of a river at dawn—these are weak approximations, but they do suggest a smell whose nature is made up of the most tantalizing promises which are only hinted at in the candle’s delicate burning and the river’s vagrant mists. It seems to me now that I have, from puppy-hood on, caught a touch of this smell, whose touch opened secret chambers in my heart. But before I could dash into those chambers the smell was gone and I was left standing by a can of garbage, or in a pile of wet leaves, calling myself a dreamer.
Am I dreaming now?
On every side of me, in gathering numbers—dogs, dogs, dogs! We’re at the edge of the city, racing along through the last broken streets where poor and hungry dogs join us from small tarpaper shacks. They’re skinny, snappy creatures, but their spirit is as high as that of the finest pedigree among us, of which there is also a great number.
Yes, there are sparkling collars and jingling tags of every sort. The society dogs
as well as the mongrels are drawn by this powerful lure. Together, all of us together—oh, it’s wonderful as we pad along, tails wagging, noses lifted, and the smell all around us.
There are the hounds up ahead. They’ve reached the meeting place first, hounds of every kind, running back and forth in the vacant lot at the end of town. Their noses are to the ground, and they’re barking at a creature who is swifter than any fox or rabbit, a creature who can’t be seen, whose scent alone decrees that he is here. The beagles howl and chase in circles, the bird dogs point in every direction, for the scent is all-pervasive. Into the empty lot, then, come the rest of the dogs—collies and bulls, terriers and greyhounds, little Pekingese on tiny pads, St. Bernards with tremendous paws, and mongrels of every size and shape.
On the hillside above the field, I see alley cats prowling nervously back and forth, watching me. And from the edges of the field, peeking through the grass, come numerous rats, mice, and moles. They’ve all caught the scent. Humans can’t perceive it, for their noses have fallen into disuse. But we animals are intimate with it, upon the vacant lot, as we gather in a sea of fangs and fur.
