Loren Eiseley: "The Innocent Fox"

This is an excerpt from an essay in Loren Eiseley's collection, The Star Thrower.  The essay is titled "The Innocent Fox."   Perhaps it could have been called "The Innocent Fox and the Innocent Human"?


The episode occurred upon an unengaging and unfrequented shore,  It began in the late afternoon of a day devoted at the start to ordinary scientific purposes.  There was the broken prow of a beached boat subsiding in heavy sand, left by the whim of ancient currents a long way distant from the shifting coast.  Somewhere on the horizon wavered the tenuous outlines of a misplaced building, growing increasingly insubstantial in the autumn light. 


A fog suddenly moved in, and he is trapped.  Rather than wander about, he decides to stay by the beached boat until the fog lifts or morning comes.


. . . It was then I saw the miracle.  I saw it because I was hunched at ground level smelling rank of fox, and no longer gazing with upright human arrogance upon the things of this world.  

I did not realize at first what it was that I looked upon.  As my wandering attention centered, I saw nothing but two small projecting ears lit by the morning sun.  Beneath them, a small neat face looked shyly up at me.  The ears moved at every sound, drank in a gull's cry and the far horn of a ship.  They crinkled, I began to realize, only with curiosity, they had not learned to fear.  The creature was very young.  He was alone in a dread universe.  I crept on my knees around the prow and crouched beside him  It was a small fox pup from a den under the timbers who looked up at me.  God knows what had become of his brothers and sisters.  His parent must not have been home fro hunting.

He innocently selected what I think was a chicken bone from an untidy pile of splintered rubbish and shook it at me invitingly.   There was a vast and playful humor in his face.  "If there was only one fox in the world and I could kill him. I would do."  The words of a British poacher in a pub rasped in my ears. I dropped even further and painfully away from human stature.  It has been said repeatedly that one can never, try as he will, get around to the front of the universe  Man is destined to see only its far side, to realize nature only in  retreat.

Yet here was the thing in the midst of the bones, the wide-eyed, innocent fox inviting me to play, with the innate courtesy of it two forepaws placed appealingly together, along with a mock shake of the head.  The universe was swinging in some fantastic fashion around to present its face, and the face was so small that the universe itself was laughing.

It was not a time for human dignity. It was a time only for the careful observance of amenities written behind the stars.  Gravely I arranged my forepaws while the puppy whimpered with ill-concealed excitement.  I drew the breath of a fox's den into my nostrils. On impulse, I picked up clumsily a whiter bone and shook it in teeth that had not entirely forgotten their original purpose.  Round and round we tumbled for one ecstatic moment.  We were the innocent thing in the midst of the bones, born in the egg, born in the den, born in the dark cave with the stone ax close to hand, born at last in human guise to grow coldly remote in the room with the rifle rack upon the wall.

But, I had seen my miracle.  I had seen the universe as it begins for all things.  It was, in reality, a child's universe, a tiny and laughing universe.  I rolled the pup on his back and ran, literally ran for the neared ridge.  The sun was half out of the sea, and the world was swinging back to normal.  The adult foxes would be already trotting home.

A little farther on, I passed one on a ridge who knew well I had no gun, for it swung by quite close, stepping delicately with brush and head held high.  Its face was watchful but averted,  It did not matter.  It was what I had experienced and the fox had experienced, what we had all experienced in adulthood.   We passed carefully on our separate ways into the morning, eyes not meeting. 

.   .   .   .   .

For just a moment I had held the universe at bay by the simple expedient of sitting on my haunches before a fox den and tumbling about with a chicken bone.  It is the gravest, most meaningful act I shall ever accomplish, but, as  Thoreau once remarked of some peculiar errand of his own, there is no use reporting it to the Royal Society.




Perhaps we should, at times, forget our status as lords of creation.  I read somewhere the creativity is strongest in those who have never quite completely grown up.  Something to think about anyway.




I suppose this will be seen by many as just a cute story, of little consequence and to be quickly forgotten or ignored.  I think it's very significant in that it tells us a lot about the type of person Loren Eiseley was and much about the way he saw the world.   I wonder how many other scientists would act as he did and also reveal it to their fellow scientists.   Eiseley had mentioned once or twice that some of his colleagues actually reprimanded him for his non-scientific outlook as expressed in his essays and poetry.

I am reminded of many SF stories I had read in the past that pushed the idea that the world would be a better place, a more open and tolerant world if run by scientists and technologists, for they were free of prejudice and would be more willing to forgo past ways of thinking and rely on evidence.   I don't see much of that anymore in SF.  Perhaps SF writers have also read the accounts of the difficulties that new ideas, in spite of the evidence, had in being accepted.  As usual, it's a case of yesterday's heresies are today's truths and will be tomorrow's dogmatic barrier to new ideas.

John Muir: immortality, sort of anyway

94

Bears are made of the same dust as we, and breathe the same winds and drink of the same waters.  A bear's days are warmed by the same sun, his dwellings are overdomed by the same blue sky, and his life turns and ebbs with heart-pulsings like ours, and was poured from the same First Fountain.  And whether he at last goes to our stingy heaven or no, he has terrestrial immortality.  His life not long, not short, knows no beginning, no ending.  To him life unstinted, unplanned, is above the accidents of time, and his years, markless and boundless, equal Eternity.

-- John Muir --
from John Muir: In His Own Words 


Many have said that only humans are "mortal" for we alone know we have a beginning and an end.  Others on this planet are unaware of this and, therefore, have a form of immortality.  While this idea is not unique to John Muir, I don't think I've ever heard anyone put it as clearly and concretely as this. 

Theodore Sturgeon: "Helix the Cat"

Theodore Sturgeon (1918--1985)
"Helix the Cat"   a short story
from The Ultimate Egoist:  Volume 1, The Complete Stories


This is one of Theodore Sturgeon's short stories, one that I hadn't read before.  As usual, it's a bit quirky, as most of his tales are. It is an early story, written in 1939 and rejected at that time and finally published in 1979.  Why? I don't know.  I think it's a delightful little tale with an interesting cast.

It's a first person narrative, and it takes place in the home of Pete Tronti, the narrator.  Pete has a small lab at his place, and that's the cause of what happens in the story.  Most of the story happens there.

Another character in the cast is Helix.  Pete tells us, "Ah, he was a cat.  A big black tom, with a white throat and white mittens, and a tail twice as long as that of an ordinary cat.  He carried it in a graceful spiral--three complete turns--and hence his name.  He could sit on one end of that tail and take two turns around his head with the other.  Ah, he was a cat."

The third character is a soul, the soul of a dead man, Wallace Gregory, and he, or actually his soul, turns up because he was trying to escape from Them, the Soul Eaters!  This is why we find Pete in his lab, apparently talking to an empty bottle.

To be brief, Pete has invented a new type of glass and has just completed making a bottle of  it.  It is a flexible glass that bounces when dropped, and it has other properties, as Pete unfortunately discovers.  Wallace, or his soul,  explains that when a person dies, the soul leaves the body, and this is when They, the Soul Eaters, enter the scene.  They eat the souls of dead humans, but not all dead humans.  Something happens to the souls of people who know they are about to die.  Wallace doesn't know what--maybe grow a protective cover or something.  Any way, They don't go after the souls of those who had known they were about to die.

Wallace explains that he didn't know he was about to die, and therefore his soul didn't have enough time to get protected.  They were about to grab him when he spotted Pete's latest invention and somehow realized that the glass bottle would protect him, so he dived into the bottle.  As long as he stays inside the bottle, he will be safe from Them.  Perhaps some time in the future, he will find a human who is willing to die and let Wallace occupy the now empty body.

All goes well until Wallace gets bored.  The thought of spending an eternity in a bottle doesn't excite him any more than it excited the various djinn or genies we hear about in various tales.  He is getting desperate trapped there. But, he has an idea.  He tells Pete that by making some appropriate changes, he could occupy the body of a small animal, such as a dog or a . . . cat.

Pete looks at Helix and is horrified.  " 'You 're being emotional,' said Wally scornfully.  'If you've got any sense of values at all, there'll be no choice.  You can save my immortal soul by sacrificing the life of a cat.  Not many men have  that sort of an opportunity, especially at that price.' "

Pete makes his choice, and sadly, he makes the wrong one.  He's somewhat appeased when Wally tells him that Helix's soul is in no danger from Them.  His soul will just leave and go where animal souls go.  And, since Wally's soul is in telepathic communication with Pete's soul, Helix is unaware of Wally's existence and therefore, Wally's plans for him.

Wally modifies Helix (souls can do all sorts of things that they can't do while in a live body), so that eventually Helix is able to talk and read and write, and now it's time for the Great Transformation.

But, things did not progress as planned, by anybody. This should have been expected since deception was a part of the plan and that never bodes well.  In fact, everybody involved was deceiving somebody--the double-cross was SOP in the Great Transformation.  Another complication is that several of the cast knew things that the other members didn't know that they knew, but they didn't know everything.  The outcome, once again, disproved that old adage, because, let's face facts,  "what you don't know CAN hurt you."

But it did show, as usual, that another old adage is true:

 "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
       (and cats and souls and Them)
   Gang aft a-gley."


However, the situation ended, and contrary to Shakespeare, it did not end well.  

Harlan Ellison: Some comments about A Boy and His Dog

The following quotations come from HE's introduction to Vic and Blood, a recently published collection of the three Vic and Blood short stories.  The introduction is titled "Latest Breaking News: The Kid and the Pooch." HE wants to set the record straight regarding responsibility for the film.



"The film version of  'A Boy and His Dog' had a more than slightly misogynistic tone.  Not the story, the movie.  I have no trouble placing the blame on that sexist loon Jones (see: "Huck and Tom,   The Bizarre Liaison of Ellison and Jones" in  Outre magazine, issue #309, Fall 2002).  He was brung up in Texas, and as a good ole boy he is pretty much beyond retraining.

But I catch the flak.   I've had to go to universiies where they've screened the movie (it being one of the most popular campus films perennially, and constantly available in one of another unauthorized knock-off video versions)  and I've had to try to explain to Politically Correct nitwits that I didn't write the damned film--which I happen to like a lot, except for the idiotic last line, which I despise--I wrotne the original story; so I won't accept the blame for what they perceive as a 'woman-hating' in the film.

And I say to them READ THE D_____D STORY!  In the story (not to give too much away for those few of you who don't know this material), as in the film.  .  .  VIC NEVER TOUCHES THE MEAT!"

"So here we are,  Vic, Blood, you, me, 34 years after I wrote that first section (which turned out to be the second section, actually).  Twenty-eight years after the film of  'A Boy and His Dog' won me a Hugo at the 34th World Science Fiction Convention.  And I've written the rest of the book, BLOOD'S A ROVER.  The final, longest section is in screenplay form--and they're bidding here in Hollywood, once again, for the feature film aand TV rights --and one  of these days before I go through that final door, I'll translate it into elegant prose, and the full novel will appear."

Well, it's been ten years since he wrote this on "25 March 2003," and I haven't seen anything of the novel or heard anything about the film.  By the way, I've reread this several times and any unusual spelling or punctuation you find belong to HE.