The Fittest Read online

  I had no hint of anything wrong until I saw Gloria’s body lying beside the house, her print wrap a vivid splash of color against the gray stone. I stopped. I didn’t have to examine her to know she was dead. No one could lie like that and be alive.

  I don’t know what I felt, what I thought. I certainly didn’t think anything coherent, except that now my dream of living someday with Gloria as we had once lived, safe and lazy and happy, was shattered forever. I think I stood for a long time, motionless, staring down at the poor broken thing which had once made me envied, which had once made people whisper: “I wonder what she sees in him?”

  When I did feel anything, it was the most savage anger that had ever gripped me. Not civilized anger — wild, vengeful anger. I had to kill something. The padog didn’t satisfy me. That had been before I knew about Gloria. I looked up and saw a black cat.

  I had noticed already, half consciously, from the lacerations on Gloria’s body, that a pacat or cats had had a lot to do with her death, and when I saw that cat watching me from a distance, I knew it had been involved. It seemed to be surveying me with feline glee, enjoying what it knew must be my feelings as I stared down at Gloria. That was why it was there — it couldn’t bear to miss seeing me find her.

  I dropped my gun and the rabbits and charged at the pacat. It wasted no time in getting off its mark, but I was too insanely angry to let it get away. Sheer determination can often work miracles. Though I probably couldn’t have caught that cat in the ordinary way, the knowledge that it had brought about Gloria’s death gave me speed I never had before or since. I dived at it finally, caught it in my hands, and choked it to death.

  The gun and the rabbits were lying where I had dropped them. That was surprising, but I was beyond being surprised, beyond caring, for that matter. I examined Gloria for the last time, guessing by the scratches on her skin and clothes part of what had happened, and then went into the house and guessed the rest. Gloria I left where she lay, for the same reason that had made me leave the padog where it lay. What happened to her body made no difference to her now. With things as they were then, it didn’t take people long to become realistic about things like that.

  Inside the farmhouse, after I had been upstairs, forced the fireproof door, and formed my conclusions from the dead mouse in the corridor and other signs, I skinned the rabbits clumsily and stewed them in a huge pot.

  My immediate course of action was becoming clear. I couldn’t stay in that lonely farmhouse any longer — anyway, I no longer needed to, now that Gloria was dead. I could go back to America, if I could get there, or to Germany, Italy, anywhere.

  But as I thought about it, I found I had already made up my mind to go to England. It was the obvious thing to do. I didn’t think that it would be safe to try to go to America, even if going to America was still a practical proposition. My altered passport might pass, but I’d be a fool to risk it.

  An hour since, I’d had no intention of leaving the farmhouse. Now, with Gloria dead, I had already made up my mind to wait only for the rabbits to cook and for the one o’clock radio news from London before setting out for Boulogne or Calais.

  • • •

  The paggets never bothered me as much as they bothered Gloria. I wasn’t afraid of them, not the way she was. If a pagget showed itself to me, I made a determined effort to kill it, but I didn’t overstrain myself. Paggets individually weren’t so very important — it was collectively that they represented such a danger.

  The nature of the human-pagget struggle is still misunderstood by some people. And understanding the paggets has always been the prerogative of a few, the few who are able to rid their minds of preconceived, irrational, optimistic, or pessimistic notions.

  First of all, they’re not animals with human intelligence, fighting for supremacy as different groups of men do. If you’re trying to understand them on that basis, you never will. They’re animals whose brains have been forced a few million years further along the evolutionary highway, while their bodies remain very much the same as their ancestors’ bodies, a little bigger, perhaps.

  But they’re animals, with animal motivations, savagery, tradition, and temperament. As such they’re automatically enemies of any other creatures which threaten their own survival, particularly men. There had never been any pagget-human co-operation. Even the dogs, given pagget cunning, became automatically deadly enemies of mankind.

  And they were right. Some people will never admit that — they say the paggets attacked us treacherously and unnecessarily, that we’d have treated peaceably with them if we’d been given the chance, that even yet we should try to arrange an armistice. They never realize, those idealists, that men and paggets both want the whole world and will never be satisfied with anything less.

  If the paggets were foolish enough to trust us, to treat with us, we’d scheme secretly until we thought we could massacre the lot and then do it. But it’s a theoretical point, because nothing like a non-aggression pact could ever be agreed.

  Paggets, in that respect, see more clearly than we do.

  To go back to the origins of the paggets: of course nobody had believed that anything you did to a cat’s brain could be transmitted to the next generation — that goes without saying. No one would have manufactured a menace like the paggets deliberately.

  But as it turned out, these mentally stimulated animals could and did transmit new intelligence to others of their kind — not in one generation but in two. They weren’t merely modified cats, dogs, rats, and mice, as artificial as peroxide blondes, they were four new species. What happened proved that.

  When a first-stage pagget was created, its brain forced into new and wider channels, it generally went quietly mad. It became incapable of learning anything, it forgot how to look for food and sometimes wouldn’t eat even when food was placed at its feet, it couldn’t sleep, it did all manner of strange, pointless things which ordinary animals didn’t do. But occasionally, once in every two hundred cases, some superior specimen became cleverer, not mad. And for the sake of these animal geniuses, hundreds of specimens were treated.

  First-stage paggets and their characteristics concern nobody any more. Nor do second-stage paggets, the offspring of either the mad or the superior first-stage paggets. These second-stage, or halfway paggets were cunning and cautious rather than intelligent, their one aim in life being to escape from human beings, go into close hiding and reproduce themselves.

  Third in line were the full-blown, fully developed paggets. It wasn’t known at the time, but the results showed that Paget’s process, whatever it was, affected the genes as well as the brain.

  That was how it came about that even the dogs had the necessary start. No one was much interested in the mad first-stage paggets, being too fascinated by the superior variety — which wasn’t nearly as superior as the true paggets, when they arrived. The second-stage paggets were watched and tested, of course, but they too were less interesting than the first-stage superiors.

  And by the time the truth was known, scores of first-, second-, and third-stage paggets had escaped. Particularly the third-stagers — no ordinary cage or room or building could hold a true pagget.

  There had been pagget horses, once, but fortunately their reproduction period was too long to give them a chance to establish themselves. Unlike the cats, dogs, rats, and mice, the pahorses were almost all killed off.

  I had no packing to do. Since I was going to have to walk, there was no question of taking anything more than I needed — money, some clothing, weapons, my doubtful passport, a few other papers. So instead of making preparations, I simply dropped into an armchair and thought.

  I thought of Gloria, of course, in all her moods, in all the places we had been together. The further back I remembered her, the worse the loss was to bear.

  Gloria at sixteen, awed by my strength, my knowledge, my assurance. Gloria dancing with me, making no attempt to hide the fact that no other fellow or girl at the dance meant anything to her when I was there, ignoring everyone’s advice not to let me know how much I meant to her. Gloria swimming with me all one summer, then once deliberately forgetting to bring her bathing costume so that she’d have to swim naked with me, and at the last moment not being able to go through with it, and sitting miserably on the bank while I swam.

  Gloria being overcome one night by her own craving for love, and insisting later that I didn’t have to marry her just because … Gloria, who had never written anything apart from essays in school, writing every day when I was away on a visit to my aunts in Pittsburgh. Gloria giving me ridiculously expensive presents — she had always had plenty of money, and, having money, she wanted to spend it on me.

  Gloria on our honeymoon, so indescribably sweet.

  Almost everything B.P. — before the paggets — was on the credit side, almost everything was happiness. Gloria couldn’t help not being the kind of girl who could adapt herself to a daily battle with four cunning, savage, inimical species.

  Yet … in the midst of my grief and anger, I couldn’t help checking off things that were going to be easier now. I stopped myself every time I caught myself at it, but the list grew.

  I could live in a city again if I liked. It had been because of Gloria that I hadn’t dared live among people, because of what she knew, because of what someone would sooner or later worm out of her.

  I needn’t stay in one place any more. I had always had to go back to Gloria — back to her, because she couldn’t possibly come with me. She was too frightened. It was the opposite of claustrophobia, a fear not of enclosed spaces but of the open, where she could be attacked from any or all sides.

  I didn’t have two to feed any more.

  I no longer had to fear finding Gloria dead — because it had happen
ed. That, in a way, was the greatest release. It was something I had known had to happen some time. I had pictured it in all the ways it might happen. I might have found her with her throat torn out by a padog. She might have been eaten alive by rats. I might never have found her at all — it seemed to me that if I were a pagget, and knew Gloria, I’d have waited patiently until an opportunity occurred to chase her out of the house and away from it.

  Well, now it was over.

  It was like a man being scared of the draft in wartime, insanely certain that he would be killed in his first engagement — and then losing both legs in an accident. He wouldn’t be glad to lose his legs, and yet, now that he had, at least he wasn’t going to be killed in battle.

  Chapter 3

  The English news commentator’s voice was clear and cool.

  I couldn’t get America on the little plastic portable radio, and I couldn’t understand French well enough to follow the news. I had to make do with the news from London.

  Earlier there had been rage, heat, drama, even some rather startling swearing over the ether. But swearing at the paggets didn’t do them any harm, nor did it help matters to get furious at them. Soon the rage and heat had disappeared, from the air waves at least, the drama of the struggle was played down rather than played up, and the swearing stopped.

  “It is now clear that a semi-organized pagget attack on transport of all kinds is in operation,” said the cool voice reflectively. “Even flying is becoming too dangerous. It has proved almost impossible to guard planes adequately and be sure that no damage has been done before the guard was posted. Pamice have been the chief saboteurs, but …”

  I cocked an eye at the portable. So the B.B.C. was adopting the short form at last. Some abbreviation was certainly necessary: “pagget mice,” which had been used till then, was too clumsy. First the super-mice, rats, dogs, and cats had been Paget’s Pets to the public, whatever their official designation had been. They had become, in order, paget-pets, pagpets, and paggets. Now, apparently, they were officially pamice, parats, padogs, and pacats, with paggets as the generic term.

  “The railway services which were suspended five weeks ago,” the newscaster went on, “must remain suspended meantime, it is officially announced. Inspections of the track at various points in the South of England have shown that the wooden sleepers have in many cases been eaten away. Trains passing over such sabotaged sections would certainly be derailed. There seems no doubt that gangs of parats are working deliberately to destroy railway communication, with a fairly clear idea of how to make the track unsafe. As a rule the sleepers are weakened under one rail so that a heavy weight causes that rail to collapse while the other remains firm …”

  I could have told them about that months ago. In America the metal ties had given the paggets no more trouble; they had simply undermined the foundations beneath the ties at one side so that the track tipped over in the same way. There had been scores of derailments before the railroad services were stopped.

  There was no answer, either — I could have told the B.B.C. announcer, who was describing possible counter-measures, that none of them would work. Railroad tracks could be weakened in such a way that there was nothing to see. They could be left strong enough to support handcars sent ahead to test the track, but weak enough to collapse under loaded trains. Even if the inspection was thorough, a horde of rats could wait till it was over and weaken a section in some lonely spot in a matter of minutes.

  No, railroad travel was out, for a long time to come. Perhaps I’d never see a train again.

  “Listeners who still have cars in working order,” the announcer went on, “are advised to check their garages every night for pagget holes. Mechanics are already fully employed keeping essential vehicles in commission. Private cars which are damaged by paggets cannot be serviced by qualified mechanics. A new order makes it illegal for garages to accept private vehicles for servicing, other than doctors’ cars …”

  Instead of being surprised at this development, I was surprised it had been so long delayed.

  Paggets didn’t, as far as I knew, have any means of communication with each other except demonstration. Paggets individually thought of things, just as human beings did. Some parat or other, watching a train speeding along a track, had worked out that if the track could be broken or damaged, the train couldn’t run. It probably didn’t know exactly what a train was, or what its purpose was, but it did know that there were men and women in it and that the running of the train was in some way important to us. Therefore it should be stopped if possible.

  A wordless consultation with the parat’s fellows was probably all that was needed to put a scheme for sabotage into operation.

  That was easy enough, and probably hundreds of groups of parats all over the world had done the same thing independently. Putting a car out of commission was even easier, but the parats had to find out what to do by trial and error. Here I’ve no doubt demonstration proved useful. Some would gnaw the leatherwork inside, some the floor boards, some the tires — and eventually, by primitive science, they would discover that biting through ignition leads or through the gasoline feed was a quick way to put a car out of commission temporarily, and those who knew that would demonstrate the method to others.

  There was nothing else of interest in the London news — no word of any organized counter-attack on the paggets, no other news. All news these days was news of the paggets, directly or indirectly.

  I switched off and prepared to leave the farmhouse, and France.

  I packed everything in a bag, including all the pictures of Gloria I could find. There was one in particular, a head-and-shoulders portrait taken by a very good photographer in Chicago, that was so real, so like Gloria, that I packed it away hurriedly when I saw it. I couldn’t look at it, yet. It was too close to the last time, only a few hours since, when I had held Gloria in my arms.

  I thought of taking the little radio with me. Its batteries were still good and I didn’t want to miss the newscasts. I decided against it because the set, small as it was, was still too big to carry about with me. I had the rifle too. It was quite a burden, but there was no question of leaving it behind.

  I didn’t go round the side of the house for a last look at Gloria. I’m no sentimentalist. Maybe that’s clear already. Maybe that’s why I’m still alive.

  I reached Sambères at about four o’clock. Sambères was the nearest village, nine miles north of the farmhouse where we had been staying. It had always struck me as a peculiarly unfriendly village, partly because it was ugly, partly because nobody in the place seemed to speak English and my French is very poor indeed.

  It looked exactly as usual as I entered the main street. It was gray, drab, uninteresting. The streets were narrow and uneven. Compared with the sunnier towns of southern France, it was like a black-and-white photograph beside a color print.

  I didn’t intend to stay long. I nodded to the few people I knew by sight, then turned into a café for something to drink. Walking hadn’t made me hungry, only thirsty.

  At this period things looked almost as usual, at any rate in a small town. I ordered limonade gaseuse, sat down and rested my legs.

  The only other customer was a girl who was clearly passing through, like myself. She was side-on to me two or three tables away and favored me with only a casual glance. I might have talked to her if I’d been surer of my French.

  She had Paris written all over her. I couldn’t help looking at her and thinking of Gloria, and how much lovelier Gloria had been than other girls one saw, even quite presentable girls. This one only made me realize once again what a lovely girl Gloria had been. There was something slightly repellent about this one, too, something hard and independent which wasn’t altogether attractive. I looked away, missing Gloria.

  Presently a small party of men came along the street and into the café. I didn’t pay much attention at first. But when a shadow fell over me I looked up. A heavy, puffing, angry man stood at my elbow.