Reality by Other Means. James Morrow

and sensitivity to each extraction. During the next three years, you’ll lose only trivial knowledge, useless skills, and unpleasant memories.”

      “Three years?” I howled. “You bastards plan to keep me here three years?”

      “Give or take a month. Once that interval has passed, my peers and I shall have reached the absolute apex of vertebrate ethical development.”

      “See, Blake, they’ve thought of everything,” said Vickie. “These people are visionaries.”

      “These people are Nazis,” I said.

      “Really, sir, name-calling is unnecessary,” said Maxwell with a snort. “There’s no reason we can’t all be friends.” He rested an affirming hand on my shoulder. “We’ve given you a great deal of information to absorb. I suggest you spend tomorrow afternoon in quiet contemplation. Come evening, we’ll all be joining the doctor for dinner. It’s a meal you’re certain to remember.”

      My new bride and I passed the night in our depressing little cottage beside the windmill. Much to my relief, I discovered that my sexual functioning had survived the bilateral hemispherectomy. We had to exercise caution, of course, lest we snap the vital link between medulla and cord, with the result that the whole encounter quickly devolved into a kind of slow-motion ballet. Vickie said it was like mating with a china figurine, the first negative remark I’d heard her make concerning my predicament.

      At ten o’clock the next morning, one of Karl’s human-headed sheep entered the bedroom, walking upright and carrying a wicker tray on which rested two covered dishes. When I asked the sheep how long she’d been living at Pollifex Farm, her expression became as vacant as a cake of soap. I concluded that the power of articulation was reserved only to those mutants on an Altruoid regimen.

      The sheep bowed graciously and left, and we set about devouring our scrambled eggs, hot coffee, and buttered toast. Upon consuming her final mouthful, Vickie announced that she would spend the day reading two scientific treatises she’d received from Maxwell, both by Dr. Pollifex: On the Mutability of Species and The Descent of Morals. I told her I had a different agenda. If there was a way out of this bucolic asylum, I was by-God going to find it.

      Before I could take leave of my wife, Karl himself appeared, clutching a black leather satchel to his chest as a mother might cradle a baby. He told me he deeply regretted Wednesday’s assault — I must admit, I detected no guile in his apology — then explained that he’d come to collect the day’s specimen. From the satchel he removed a glass-and-steel syringe, using it to suck up a small quantity of anterior cortex and transfer it to a test tube. When I told Karl that I felt nothing during the procedure, he reminded me that the human brain is an insensate organ, nerveless as a brick.

      I commenced my explorations. Pollifex’s domain was vaster than I’d imagined, though most of its fields and pastures were deserted. True to the bull-man’s claim, a fence hemmed the entire farm, the barbed-wire strands woven into a kind of demonic tennis net and strung between steel posts rising from a concrete foundation. In the northeast corner lay a barn as large as Maxwell’s concert hall, and it was here, clearly, that André Pollifex perpetuated his various crimes against nature. The doors were barred, the windows occluded, but by staring through the cracks in the walls I managed to catch glimpses of hospital gurneys, surgical lights, and three enormous glass beakers in which sallow, teratoid fetuses drifted like pickles in brine.

      About twenty paces from Pollifex’s laboratory, a crumbling tool shed sat atop a hill of naked dirt. I gave the door a hard shove — not too hard, given my neurological vulnerability — and it pivoted open on protesting hinges. A shaft of afternoon sunlight struck the interior, revealing an assortment of rakes, shovels, and pitchforks, plus a dozen bags of fertilizer — but, alas, no wire cutters.

      My perambulations proved exhausting, both mentally and physically, and I returned to the cottage for a much-needed nap. That afternoon, my brain tormented me with the notorious “student’s dream.” I’d enrolled in an advanced biology course at my old alma mater, Rutgers, but I hadn’t attended a single class or handed in even one assignment. And now I was expected to take the final exam.

      Vickie, my brain, and I were the last to arrive at André Pollifex’s dinner party, which occurred in an airy glass-roofed conservatory attached to the back of the farmhouse. The room smelled only slightly better than the piano barn. At the head of the table presided our host, a disarmingly ordinary-looking man, weak of jaw, slight of build, distinguished primarily by his small black moustache and complementary goatee. His face was pale and flaccid, as if he’d been raised in a cave. The instant he opened his mouth to greet us, though, I apprehended something of his glamour, for he had the most majestic voice I’ve ever heard outside of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House.

      “Welcome, Mr. and Mrs. Meeshaw,” he said. “May I call you Blake and Vickie?”

      “Of course,” said Vickie.

      “May I call you Joseph Mengele?” I said.

      Pollifex’s white countenance contracted into a scowl. “I can appreciate your distress, Blake. Your sacrifice has been great. I believe I speak for everyone here when I say that our gratitude knows no bounds.”

      Karl directed us into adjacent seats, then resumed his place next to Pollifex, directly across from the bull-man. I found myself facing a pig-woman whose large ears flopped about like college pennants and whose snout suggested an oversized button. Vickie sat opposite a goat-man with a tapering white beard dangling from his chin and two corrugated horns sprouting from his brow.

      “I’m Serge Caprikov,” said the goat-man, shaking first Vickie’s hand, then mine. “In my former life I was Bud Frye, plumbing contractor.”

      “Call me Juliana Sowers,” said the pig-woman, enacting the same ritual. “At one time I was Doris Owens of Owens Real Estate, but then I found a higher calling. I cannot begin to thank you for the contribution you’re making to science, philosophy, and local politics.”

      “Local politics?” I said.

      “We three beneficiaries of QZ-11-4 form the core of the new Common Sense Party,” said Juliana. “We intend to transform Greenbriar into the most livable community in America.”

      “I’m running for Borough Council,” said Serge. “Should my campaign prove successful, I shall fight to keep our town free of Consumerland discount stores. Their advent is inevitably disastrous for local merchants.”

      Juliana crammed a handful of hors d’oeuvres into her mouth. “I seek a position on the School Board. My stances won’t prove automatically popular — better pay for elementary teachers, sex education starting in grade four — but I’m prepared to support them with passion and statistics.”

      Vickie grabbed my hand and said, “See what I mean, Blake? They may be mutants, but they have terrific ideas.”

      “As for me, I’ve got my eye on the Planning Commission,” said Maxwell, releasing a loud and disconcerting burp. “Did you know there’s a scheme afoot to run the Route 80 Extension along our northern boundary, just so it’ll be easier for people to get to Penn State football games? Once construction begins, the environmental desecration will be profound.”

      As Maxwell expounded upon his anti-extension arguments, a half-dozen sheep arrived with our food. In deference to Maxwell and Juliana, the cuisine was vegetarian: tofu, lentils, capellini with meatless marinara sauce. It was all quite tasty, but the highlight of the meal was surely the venerable and exquisite vintages from Pollifex’s cellar. After my first few swallows of Brunello di Montalcino, I worried that Pollifex’s scalpel had denied me the pleasures of intoxication, but eventually the expected sensation arrived. (I attributed the hiatus to the extra distance my blood had to travel along my extended arteries.) By the time the sheep were serving dessert, I was quite tipsy, though my bursts of euphoria alternated uncontrollably with spasms of anxiety.

      “Know what I think?” I said, locking on Pollifex as I struggled to prevent my brain from slurring my words. “I think you’re trying