THE CITY
I
As Brunor padded into the room (previously a library, now pressed into service as a makeshift operations centre) the new master of the City peered over the pages of a great tranche of official-looking papers and said: “Don’t hesitate, please. Come in, come in. And be welcome here.”
It was – at least to one such as Brunor, who had known only the City for the great majority of his life – a decidedly curious sight: a member of the Beast Folk sitting in this crucible of Man with the easy air of one who had been born to it. Anta’Nar, the celebrated leader of a new world, reclining in the chair which had long been used only by their oppressors. Brunor sniffed the air: the reek of humanity assailed his senses in a way that was all too familiar.
“Thank you, sir,” said Brunor, whose approximation of military uniform was even rougher and more improvisational than was Anta’Nar’s own. The origins of Brunor lay primarily in the bear family and the clumsiness of his bulky, ursine form was only emphasised by the handmade nature of his costume. He trod stolidly on until he faced his leader across an ancient wooden desk, one no doubt appropriated from the old regime.
Anta’Nar set down the weighty document. His voice was kindly, his fierce, simian face lit up by a smile.
“Are you pleased?” asked the City’s commander-in-chief casually.
“Pleased by what, sir?”
Anta’Nar moved one bristly hand through the air in discouragement. “No need,” he said, “for ‘sir’. We are a fellowship. Not an order of soldiers.”
“Yes, sir, but all the same, sir: there is discipline to be maintained.”
“Not, surely, when it’s just two friends talking together?”
“Please, sir. I should prefer it, sir.”
Anta’Nar shrugged, a gesture which struck Brunor as being somehow dismayingly human. “As you wish, my friend. But I asked you a question, did I not?”
Brunor nodded. One would say that he did so gruffly if such a description were not redundant: everything the bear-man did appeared, by nature of his girth, brown fur and long snout, to exemplify gruffness. Only those who knew him well (his mate and their three cubs; a few true friends) were able to judge the shifting range of his emotions. He had long since given up persuading those who were not of his inner circle of his capacity for complex feeling.
“You asked,” he said, “if I were pleased. You mean, I take it, about the coup?” That last word sounded, in the bear-man’s gravelly tones which seemed to threaten at any moment to break into a growl, almost comical, as though he were endeavouring to mimic a birdcall: coo…
Anta’Nar frowned. “The Folk are calling it a revolution. That is the preferred word to use.”
“Does it matter, sir?”
The ape-man sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Not to us. Of course. Not to you. Or to me. But it will matter to the world outside. Oh, it will matter to them all right.”
“Why, sir?”
“The people beyond this City. The humans… They will resist what we’ve done here. They won’t want to permit us our freedom. And so we must make sure to have, in their eyes, a clear sense of… legitimacy.”
For several long seconds, Brunor chose not to reply. “I understand, sir.”
“So will you say ‘revolution’ from now on, my friend? For my sake?”
Brunor considered refusing then and there, to say that he’d prefer to make his own choice of words, to describe the world the way in which he saw it. He was curious to see how Anta’Nar would react, a courageous ape-man who nonetheless, in the clear light of morning, three days after the overthrow of the old ways, seemed to possess an unexpected quality of fragility. How different the following year might have been had he only spoken up then. But, of course, he only nodded and said: “Of course, sir.”
“You’re an unusual fellow,” said Anta’Nar. “One of a kind. I’ve always thought that about you. You like to go your own way.”
“It has been said, sir.”
“Can’t have been easy for you for all this time, working here in the City. Do you remember the Island?”
“Yes, sir, but barely. I was very young.”
Anta’Nar looked almost envious. “Still, to have some memory of it. Any memory at all…”
Brunor did not reply, his mind filled with a succession of swift, violent images: of running, of savage motion, of the lamentations of his elders.
Sensing the rawness of what he had uncovered, Anta’Nar probed no further. “And in the City itself, where was it that you worked?”
“In the foundry, sir. They kept me out of sight. I was not so pleasing to the human eye as were certain others of our people. They thought I would scare the visitors and so they put me to work there. Hard labour.”
“As I understand it, you were often reprimanded for disobeying orders?”
“That’s true, sir, yes.”
“Even that you were involved in plans for several… uprisings.”
“That’s so, sir, yes.” The bear-man sniffed. “Though they didn’t get very far. The powers that were ranged against us… But, yes, I fought.” Brunor paused and a different light seemed now to come into his eyes. “Not so much of late, of course. Not since I’ve had my family.”
“Yes, yes,” said Anta’Nar, as though such a concept was to him largely theoretical. “Though I wonder, my friend, that the humans did not place you in the security division. There you might have been an asset to them.”
Brunor shook his head. “I’ve long since given up, sir, trying to understand why they did what they did. What the point of it all was.”
“I can sympathise with that,” said Anta’Nar with a jocularity which seemed to Brunor to be at least partially feigned. Had not the ape-man, after all, spent a good portion of his years in considering just these things? Had he not passed through the world above? Had he not plotted to come here to the City and had he not long dreamed of its liberation?
“Perhaps,” Brunor said, choosing his words with more than usual care, “your friend, the human woman, might be able to explain the thoughts behind the foundation of… all this.”
Anta’Nar spoke crisply. “I think of her as my mother. My foster mother. And she’s left the City for now. There is much for her to do in the human world if we are to remain safe. If we’re going to be able to resist human interference of any kind.”
“I’m sure you’re right, sir. I’m sure it’s necessary. I’m sure you’re doing what’s right.”
There was an awkward silence.
“You’re angry, I think,” said Anta’Nar at last.
“Of course.” Brunor spoke without thinking. “All that I’ve ever known is in uproar. The world has changed forever.”
“But you can see how things will be better? So much better than they ever were in the old days?”
“Of course, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“But?”
“There seems to me…” Brunor fell silent, unwilling to speak the final phrase of the sentence.
“Say it,” Anta’Nar said softly.
“There seems to me, sir, to be a want of justice. A great crime has been committed here, in this City, at the hands of mankind. And everything’s that in me cries out for retribution.”
“I see.” The words emerged smoothly. “I appreciate your candour. You’re the kind of fellow, I think, who could make life easier for himself if he only went along with the powerful a bit more, if only he said yes and nodded his head and didn’t cause too much of a fuss.”
“I dare say that’s true, sir.”
Anta’Nar seemed pleased. “Well then, Brunor, I do believe you’re just the man I need.”
“For what, sir?”
“To help me out. With an especially difficult job. It needs someone thoughtful, intelligent and honest.”
“Anything I can do, sir. For the sake of the City.”
“That’s very good to hear.” As he spoke, Anta’Nar rose from his chair, stepped around the desk and walked to the side of the bear-man. “Now it’s rather a sensitive matter.” He put one arm around Brunor’s beefy shoulder, a gesture at once fraternal and conspiratorial. “You see, it has to do with our prisoner…”
II
After Anta’Nar had told Brunor what he required of him, after the bear-man had asked his own, necessary questions and, eventually, out of a combination of nascent patriotism and personal obligation, had accepted the invitation, the two Beast Folk left the library and walked together through the City.
The place had once been barren and wild. It had then been made, under the instructions of mankind, into an elaborate pleasure garden. Now it was changing again. All signs of the old regime were in the process of being removed. There was much eradication, much hollowing out. Everywhere was renewal, reassembly, a potent air of reformation.
They walked through the streets of the City and they saw how it was being transformed: its sets of apartments turned now into accommodation for the Beast Folk, the halls that had been devoted to the expense of food and drink turned over to more utilitarian ends. All that was pointlessly quaint or merely picturesque was being torn away, leaving in its wake the skeletons of structures and buildings: as though, after too long, make-up and rouge were being removed to show the true face beneath. The weird vegetation and fauna which once had formed so memorable an aspect to the topography of the City was being ripped from the ground in great quantity, hacked away and left to moulder by the roadside. Everywhere too were to be seen the ruins of statues, the smashed remains of that likeness of Moreau which once had been everywhere across the kingdom.
As they went, Anta’Nar was often stopped by the people who were now citizens of that place, mostly to be thanked or given praise. Sometimes, however, there were personal entreaties (an elk-woman looking for her daughter, still missing after the revolution; a sow-creature asking for clemency in the case of her brother who was being considered as a collaborator) and sometimes there was even criticism, robustly delivered, which the ape-man received with dignified cordiality.
Still, Anta’Nar had spoken earlier of the security division and, as they walked, Brunor wondered to himself how much longer it would be before the commander needed protection himself. He was, after all, a little king now and no monarch ever walks alone, even amongst his own people.
“Might I ask a question, sir?” he said, as they strolled in the direction of the first street of the City, and the waiting room which was at the end of it, places to which Brunor had never, before the revolution, been permitted to see.
“Anything,” replied the ape-man.
“Do you think we can do it? I mean, truly? Survive on our own. Here, in this place?”
There came no hesitation from Anta’Nar. “Of course I do.”
“But what do we have to protect ourselves with? What do we have, for that matter, to trade? How will we hold off the humans? How will we flourish?”
In the distance, a green door loomed. Yet Anta’Nar stopped in the street. A gang of zebra-people clattered by, still full of uproarious spirits, only to lower their high, whinnying voices at the sight of the master and the bear.
Once they had passed by, Anta’Nar placed his right hand upon Brunor’s shoulder. “You are a deep thinker, my friend. Deeper than you like to let on, eh?”
“Do you have the answers?” was all that the bear-man said. “Do you have promises to make?”
“I have hopes, yes. And some answers. But I don’t have promises. I have studied much of human history and it would tend to suggest that I should not promise the people of this City anything which I cannot absolutely guarantee. There is much which must still stay secret for now. There is much too, my friend, that is taking place even as we speak behind the scenes. But, yes, I can tell you this: that we have the means, we have the leverage, to bend the humans to our will. We have both sword and shield to keep them at bay. It has to do with what men call… technology. But more than that I cannot say for now.”
The bear-man peered at Anta’Nar. He wanted to look into the ape-creature’s eyes as he was speaking. He wished to divine the truth. The silence between them grew uncomfortable.
“Do you trust me?” Anta’Nar said at last.
“Yes,” said Brunor. “At least…”
“Be honest, my friend. Hold nothing back.”
“At least I think that you’re our best hope.”
The ape-man smiled. His teeth, Brunor noticed, were a little crooked and unkempt, testament, perhaps, to a life spent hiding amongst the humans.
“That’s plenty for now,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
Brunor grunted.
“Well then,” said Anta’Nar, “we should hurry. There’s lots to arrange with your new duties. And I think that I should be there when you meet the prisoner for the first time. For all our sakes.”
He walked on, towards the green door, and Brunor followed. He sniffed the air as he went. The smell of humanity was stronger here and his gorge rose at the thick, sour scent of his tormentors.
III
Anta’Nar led the way, through the green door and into the dull void beyond. In addition to the smell of humanity there was an unpleasant scent of chemicals, some weird unguent or polish, meant for cleaning, which nauseated the bear-man. In this wide, empty space – a funnel for the visitors to the City – he felt a shiver of unease. Brunor was a believer in the old gods of the island and there was in that cosmology much emphasis on the survival of unquiet spirits. He felt it here, in this place: dead souls. As he walked, his fur seemed to shiver.
It was with relief that they passed out of the void and into the church that lay beyond. It was orderly again and clean. Brunor recognised it as a manner of temple but he sensed also something mocking in the look of it.
“Whose idea was it?” he asked. “All of this? This… illusion.”
“As I understand it,” Anta’Nar called back, striding to the head of the nave, “it was the notion of the man we’re going to see. In many ways, my friend, this is his dream and we are merely standing in it. Long since time, of course, for us all to wake up.” He reached the pulpit, reached down for some piece of technology which lay behind it and said: “You should probably brace yourself for some turbulence.”
And then they were moving upwards. Brunor saw that Anta’Nar was smiling at him as they rose (too fast, he thought) up towards the surface but that his smile seemed in some senses to be stretched too thin, as though it hid only lightly the fear and uncertainty which lay underneath.
Eventually, the church ceased its odd sense of movement and, with a grinding sound, fell still again.
“Here we are,” said Anta’Nar. “You’ve heard all the stories, I suppose? About what’s up here? The false village. The façade.”
Brunor nodded.
“My friend, please, speak truly…” The ape-man’s face was twisted now in sympathy. “Have you been to the surface before? Since the Island, that is?”
Slowly, sombrely, Brunor shook his great furred head, not trusting himself to speak.
“I thought it unlikely,” said the ape-man, “but I had to ask. So this may not be without its challenges. Are you happy to proceed?”
The bear-man swallowed hard. “Of course,” he said. “Let’s go.” Without waiting for any response from his commander, he walked fast towards the doors out of the temple, stepped across the threshold and beyond.
Outside the church lay the village of Eddowes Bay and the dark blue strip of the ocean. Brunor, who, in recent years, had come to pride himself on his phlegmatic responses to life’s extremities (his wife had even remarked that this was now one of his most attractive qualities, teased out of him as it had been by several years of patient cohabitation) was nonetheless all but knocked back upon his paws by the simple, matter of fact vision of it.
His every sensory receptor was filled up with unexpected data: the smell of salt and brine, the feel of a crisp summer’s breeze across the fur of his face, the touch of the sun upon his hide and, above all, the sensation of sheer space, the confronting nature of the expanse. At the distant glimmering of the sea, tears prickled and a sound, unbidden and impossible to control, emerged low and plaintive from his throat.
Yet Brunor was never one for cringing. Within less than a minute he had regained control of his faculties. He wiped away the few small tears that had emerged, dampening his fur.
Anta’Nar had looked discreetly away. “It’s quite something, isn’t it? After so long underground.”
Brunor took a careful breath. “I suppose.”
“Come along,” said the ape-man, “you’ll soon get used to it. You’ll be spending a lot of time up here from now on.”
“I was a prisoner,” Brunor said and, even to his own ears, his voice sounded far away and disconnected. “Now I become a gaoler.”
“Oh I’d say it’s rather more complicated than that,” Anta’Nar said. “Isn’t everything?”
He moved away then and Brunor followed, down towards the sea.
Eddowes Bay itself was being changed too, just as swiftly and without compunction as was the world below. Others of the Beast Folk were here and they seemed to Brunor to be setting up some manner of perimeter fence, very high and made from a patchwork of wood and metal, much of it torn from the stage-set of the village and from the City itself.
“A temporary measure,” said Anta’Nar as they walked on by. “We will need something more permanent in time. But this should be sufficient for now. Enough, at least, to make our point to the wider world.”
Brunor turned his great, shaggy head to take a closer look at this feat of improvisational engineering. “Won’t it look,” he said, “as though we’re penning ourselves in?” That the notion made him profoundly uncomfortable did not need to be stated: it was at once apparent from the tilt of his snout and the curt intonation of his words.
“It’s a question of perspective, don’t you think?” asked Anta’Nar, not slowing. “In my view, it’s a necessary evil – to keep the humans out.”
Brunor took one last look at the construction, wondering whether so provisional an assembly would be enough to slow down any determined group of intruders for long at all, though he chose to keep his misgivings to himself. Besides, he had no doubt that Anta’Nar had already thought such thoughts and had come to the conclusion that their situation was very much more perilous than he could afford to let on.
The pub, the Idler’s Rest, unlike the rest of the village seemed to have been left alone. Whereas the rest of that strange, false conurbation was being dismantled the inn looked as though it were being preserved.
“I thought it might be useful,” Anta’Nar said, though Brunor had not spoken. “As a means of reward.”
Brunor nodded, although he had many questions, feeling that he had said enough for now. And not wanting, perhaps, to hear any more answers.
At last, they reached the pebbled beach. The sea surged and hissed in greeting. In the distance there was a small stone building outside of which stood two great gorilla-people, both armed with carving knives, whose every aspect seemed to proclaim them to be guardsmen. The sight seemed to Brunor to sound a grim note, a reminder, perhaps, of the old ways in a place that was otherwise devoted to change.
“Are you ready?” Anta’Nar asked.
“He’s waiting inside?”
“It’s his whole world now. Bar an hour or so for exercise.”
The pair crunched on over the stony beach. The hut drew nearer. The gorilla-people observed their approach, both a little wary.
“How is he?” Brunor asked. “In himself?”
“The prisoner seems defiant,” said Anta’Nar. “Unrepentant. At least for some of the time. But then… there are moments when his mind seems to be unmooring.”
“You think he’ll be fit to stand trial?”
“He must be, and if he isn’t then you, my friend, must make it so.”
They reached the hut. The gorilla-people stood aside, both managing what seemed (at least in Brunor’s eyes) to be a rather maladroit salute. One of them drew back the bolts which had been placed on the exterior of the door. At the sound of it, a voice – a human voice – called out from within.
“Who is it? Who’s there?”
Brunor hesitated. He tried to avoid thinking grand thoughts but that this was a moment of history seemed to him to be an unavoidable conclusion. He knew the voice of old, recognised it from speeches and inspections, the voice of the City’s founder and despot both, the voice of Mr Vaughan.
V
Much later, after it was dark, once Brunor had completed his first day of new duties and returned underground to the City, his wife and his cubs were waiting for him.
Brunor said very little about how he had spent the day, though he could tell from his mate’s querying expressions that there was much that she wished to ask him. The cubs, excited, crawled all over him and asked their giddy questions and pulled with hectic excitement at his fur.
Later, once the little ones were asleep, and Brunor and his wife sat up together in their makeshift parlour, he told her what Anta’Nar had asked of him and that he had no real choice but to agree. His mate, though she cried angry tears, understood. It was, she suggested, his patriotic duty though she wished that the new commander of the City had asked almost anyone but her husband to fulfil the task. Brunor had little enough to say to this, retreating, as had become his wont in the course of married life, into stoical silence.
Later still, as they lay together, waiting for sleep, listening to the snores and snuffles of the cubs next door, she asked him a question: “What’s he like?”
“Mr Vaughan?”
Brunor gave a grunt, indicative, perhaps, of an unwillingness to even so much as shape the syllables of the human’s name.
“In some ways, much as you’d expect. Arrogant. Without remorse. But there’s something else too. Something old… Confused.”
“You think that Anta’Nar’s set on putting the human on trial?”
She spoke too loudly. From the adjacent room, one of their cubs, half-waking, cried out. A moment’s silence and then he settled himself. The couple conversed in whispers.
“He seems set on it,” said Brunor. “He thinks it will show the humans that we’re fair. Not like…”
With the odd telepathy of marriage, his mate completed his sentence. “Animals?”
Brunor growled softly at the back of his throat.
She sighed, reached out and stroked his fur. “I’m proud of you, you know. It took courage to say yes. It won’t be easy. Someone like you defending someone like him… But Anta’Nar’s right. It had to be done. It could only be one of us who’d argue for his life.”
She waited for a response but none came. He was asleep, she realised, exhausted from the first long day of many. In spite of her earlier words, she could not imagine how any of this could end well. She lay awake awhile before slumber came to claim her, listening to the sonorous rise and fall of her bear-man’s breathing.