Read an Excerpt
The Fate of Mice
By SUSAN PALWICK TACHYON PUBLICATIONS
Copyright © 2007 Susan Palwick
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-892391-42-1
Chapter One
The Fate of Mice
I remember galloping, the wind in my mane and the road hard against my hooves. Dr. Krantor says this is a false memory, that there is no possible genetic linkage between mice and horses, and I tell him that if scientists are going to equip IQ-enhanced mice with electronic vocal cords and teach them to talk, they should at least pay attention to what the mice tell them. "Mice," Dr. Krantor tells me acidly, "did not evolve from horses," and I ask him if he believes in reincarnation, and he glares at me and tells me that he's a behavioral psychologist, not a theologian, and I point out that it's pretty much the same thing. "You've got too much free time," he snaps at me. "Keep this up and I'll make you run the maze again today." I tell him that I don't mind the maze. The maze is fine. At least I know what I'm doing there: finding cheese as quickly as possible, which is what Id do anyhow, anytime anyone gave me the chance. But what am I doing galloping?
"You aren't doing anything galloping," he tells me. "You've never galloped in your life. You're a mouse." I ask him how a mouse can remember being a horse, and he says, "It's not a memory. Maybe it's a dream. Maybe you got the idea from something you heard or saw somewhere. On TV." There's a small TV in the lab, so Dr. Krantor can watch the news, but it's not even positioned sothat I can see it easily. And I ask him how watching something on TV would make me know what it felt like to be a horse, and he says I don't know what it feels like to be a horse, I have no idea what a horse feels like, I'm just making it up.
But I remember that road, winding ahead in moonlight, the harness pulling against my chest, the sound of wheels behind me. I remember the three other horses in harness with me, our warm breath steaming in the frosty air. And then I remember standing in a courtyard somewhere, and someone bringing water and hay. We stood there for a long time, the four of us, in our harness. I remember that, but that's all I remember. What happened next?
Dr. Krantor came grumbling into the lab this morning, Pippa in tow. "You have to behave yourself," he says sternly, and deposits her in a corner.
"Mommy was going to take me to the zoo," she says. When I stand on my hind legs to peer through the side of the cage, I can see her pigtails flouncing. "It's Saturday."
"Yes, I know that, but your mother decided she had other plans, and I have to work today."
"She did not have other plans. She and Michael were going to take me to the zoo. You just hate Michael, Daddy!"
"Here," he says, handing her a piece of graph paper and some colored pens. "You can draw a picture. You can draw a picture of the zoo."
"You could have gotten a babysitter," Pippa yells at him, her chubby little fists clenched against her polka-dot dress. You're cheap. A babysitter'd take me to the zoo!"
"I'll take you myself, Pippa." Dr. Krantor is whining now. "In a few hours. I just have a few hours of work to do, okay?"
"Huh," she says. "And I bet you wont let me watch TV, either! Well, I'm gonna talk to Rodney!"
Pippa calls me Rodney because she says it's prettier than rodent, which is what Dr. Krantor calls me: The Rodent, as if in my one small body I contain the entire order of small, gnawing mammals having a single pair of upper incisors with a chisel-shaped edge. Perhaps he intends this as an honor, although to me it feels more like a burden. I am only a small white mouse, unworthy to represent all the other rodents in the world, all the rats and rabbits and squirrels, and now I have this added weight, the mystery Dr. Krantor will not acknowledge, the burden of hooves and mane.
"Rodney," Pippa says, "Daddy's scared I'll like Michael better than him. If you had a baby girl mouse and you got a divorce and your daughters Mommy had a boyfriend, would you be jealous?"
"Mice neither marry nor are given in marriage," I tell her. In point of fact, mice are non-monogamous, and in stressful situations have been known to eat their young, but this may be more than Pippa needs to know.
Pippa scowls. "If your daughter's Mommy had a boyfriend, would you keep her from seeing your daughter at all?"
"Sweetheart," Dr. Krantor says, striding over to our corner of the lab and bending down, "Michael's not a nice person."
"Yes he is."
"No, he's not."
"Yes he is! You're just saying that because he has a picture of a naked lady on his arm! But I see naked ladies in the shower after I go swimming with Mommy! Michael doesn't always ride his motorcycle, Daddy! He promised to take me to the zoo in his truck!"
"Oh, Pippa," he says, and bends down and hugs her. "I'm just trying to protect you. I know you don't understand now. You will someday, I promise."
"I don't want to be protected," Pippa says, stabbing the paper with Dr. Krantor's red pen. "I want to go to the zoo with Mommy and Michael!"
"I know you do, sweetheart. I know. Draw a picture and talk to the rodent, okay? I'll take you to the zoo just as soon as I finish here."
Pippa, pouting, mumbles her assent and begins to draw. Dr. Krantor, who frequently vents his frustrations when he is alone in the lab, has told me about Pippa's mother, who used to be addicted to cocaine. Supposedly she is drug-free now. Supposedly she is now fit to have joint custody of her daughter. But Michael, with his motorcycle and his naked lady, looks too much like a drug dealer to Dr. Krantor. "If anything happened to Pippa while she was with them," he has told me, "I'd never forgive myself."
Pippa shows me her picture: a stick-figure, wearing pigtails and a polka-dot dress, sitting in a cage. "Here's my picture of the zoo," she says. "Rodney, do you ever wish you could go wherever you wanted?"
"Yes," I say. Dr. Krantor has warned me that the world is full of owls and snakes and cats and mousetraps, innumerable kinds of death. Dr. Krantor says that I should be happy to live in a cage, with food and water always available; Dr. Krantor says I should be proud of my contribution to science. I've told him that Id be delighted to trade places with him - far be it from me to deny Dr. Krantor his share of luxury and prestige - but he always declines. He has responsibilities in his own world, he tells me. He has to take care of his daughter. Pippa seems to think that he takes care of her in much the same way he takes care of me.
"I'm bored," she says now, pouting. "Rodney, tell me a story."
"Sweetheart," says Dr. Krantor, "the rodent doesn't know any stories. He's just a mouse. Only people tell stories."
"But Rodney can talk. Rodney, do you know any stories? Tell me a story, Rodney."
"Once upon a time," I tell her - now where did that odd phrase come from? - there was a mouse who remembered being a horse.
"Oh, goody!" Pippa claps her hands. "Cinderella! I love that one!"
My whiskers quiver in triumph. "You do? There's a story about a mouse who was a horse? Really?"
"Of course! Everybody knows Cinderella."
I don't. "How does it end, Pippa?"
"Oh, it's a happy ending. The poor girl marries the prince."
I remember nothing about poor girls, or about princes, either, and I can't say I care. "But what about the horse who was a mouse, Pippa?"
She frowns, wrinkling her nose. She looks a lot like her father when she frowns. "I don't know. It turns back into a mouse, I think. It's not important."
"It's important to me, Pippa."
"Okay," she says, and dutifully trudges across the lab to Dr. Krantor. "Daddy, in Cinderella, what happens to the mouse that turned into a horse when it turns back into a mouse?"
I hear breaking glassware, followed by Dr. Krantor's footsteps, and then he is standing above my cage and looking down at me. His face is oddly pale. "I don't know, Pippa. I don't think anyone knows. It probably got eaten by an owl or a cat or a snake. Or caught in a trap."
"Or equipped with IQ boosters and a vocal synthesizer and stuck in a lab," I tell him.
"It's just a story," Dr. Krantor says, but he's frowning. "It's an impossible story. It's a story about magic, not about science. Pippa, sweetheart, are you ready to go to the zoo now?"
"Now look," he tells me the next day, "it didn't happen. It never happened. Stories are about things that haven't happened. Somebody must have told you the story of Cinderella -"
"Who?" I demand. "Who would have told me? The only people I've ever talked to are you and Pippa -"
"You saw it on TV or something, I don't know. It's a common story. You could have heard it anywhere. Now look, rodent, you're a very suggestible little animal and you're suffering from false memory syndrome. That's very common too, believe me."
I feel my fur bristling. Very suggestible little animal, indeed!
But I don't know how I can remember a story I've never heard, a story that people knew before I remembered it. And soon I start to have other memories. I remember gnawing the ropes holding a lion to a stone table; I remember frightening an elephant; I remember being blind, and running with two blind companions. I remember wearing human clothing and being in love with a bird named Margalo. Each memory is as vivid and particular as the one about being a horse. Each memory feels utterly real.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Fate of Mice by SUSAN PALWICK Copyright © 2007 by Susan Palwick. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
