Squatting on the floor - his old legs had never been so limber - he began carefully cutting out the stories about himself and pressing them onto the adhesive pages of the scrapbook. The culled papers he put aside for later reading.
As he worked, he discovered that the biped stories fell into three classes. First, straight and rather unimaginative reporting, like that of the Frankfurter Morgenblatt; second, sympathetic pieces, appearing usually in the Sunday feature sections and with feminine by-lines (an item headlined TRAPPED IN AN ANIMAL’s BODY!, by Carla Ernsting, was typical of these); and finally, a trickle of heavily slanted stories and editorials, turning up in the later issues and in the newsmagazines. These he read with surprise and a growing fear. “Neurotic pseudohumanitarians,” said Heute in a boxed editorial, “seek to degrade humanity to the level of animals, and in so doing, strike at the very root of our civilization. Make no mistake: these sick minds would have us recognize as human every slimy polyp, every acid-breathing toad that can parrot a few phrases in German or walk through a simple maze. The self-styled Martin Naumchik, an upstart member of a vicious, degraded species …”
The biped crumpled the paper in a burst of anger. Rising, he circled the piles of newspaper, glaring at them. Then he squatted again, smoothed out the offending page and read the editorial to the end.
But he was too agitated to go on working. He closed the scrapbook and went into his front room to stare out at the gray autumn day. The sky had turned cold and rainy, and few people were on the paths.
He could no longer ignore the fact that people did not want to believe a biped’s body could be inhabited by a human mind and soul. In a general way he could even sympathize with it. But surely they must see that this was a special, different case!
He pressed his muzzle against the cold glass, down which scattered raindrops were slowly creeping.
But what if they would not?
He tried to imagine himself set free, recognized as Martin Naumchik, his rights as a citizen restored … What then? A grotesque vision of himself, a naked biped, in the city room of ParisSoir, talking to Ehrichs … then himself at a party, among fully dressed men and women with glasses in their hands.
It was absurd, impossible. Where could he go? Who would accept him? Where could he get work, or even lodgings?
The biped set his jaw stubbornly, gripping his threefingered hands together. “I am Martin Naumchik!” he muttered. But even in his own ears, the words sounded false.
VII
The biped woke himself up, tossing and muttering, from a peculiarly unpleasant dream. Something had happened to his body, his face had gone all soft and squashy, his limbs stiff … The horror of it was that everyone around him seemed to take this as entirely normal, and he could not tell then what was wrong.
He came fully awake and sat up in bed, clanking his jaws and rumpling the feathery spines along his side with his fingers. He had been dreaming, he realized suddenly - dreaming of himself as he had been before the change.
He sat for a moment, dully thinking about it. He felt a dim sense of betrayal, as if he had somehow foresworn his loyalty to that human body, once so familiar, which now seemed like an improbable nightmare. It disturbed him a little that his feelings could change so radically, in a matter of weeks. If that could happen, where was there a bottom to anything?
He got out of bed, feeling his good spirits return with the healthy responses of his body. After all, there was no use looking backward. He was himself, as determined as ever, and - he stiffened with realization … how could he have forgotten? - this was the morning of his final accounting with Griick.
Yawning nervously, he went into the living room and switched on the wall television. It was not time for the news yet. He glanced out the window, past the temporary fence, a dozen yards away, that the workmen had put up yesterday. The lawns and paths were empty in the early sunlight; there was a flutter of wings in one of the distant aviaries, then stillness again.
Now that the time was so near, he was beginning to feel anxious. He had half expected Griick to try to drug him once more, and had slept every night with a barricade across the doorway; but except for the fence, which kept anyone from coming near the cage, nothing had been done to interfere with him. He dragged the table and bookcase out of the way and wandered into the office space.
As he crossed the room, Emma’s face appeared in her doorway. “Good morning,” she said timidly.
He turned on the television. It was not time for the news yet.
As he entered the office area, Emma’s face appeared in her doorway. “Good morning,” she said timidly.
“Good morning, Emma,” the biped answered, mildly surprised. His attention was not on her. He was thinking about the pressconference to come.
The female ventured a step or two out of the doorway. “Today is Wednesday,” she observed.
“That’s right, Wednesday.”
“This is the day you are going to prove you are Herr Naumchik.”
“Yes,” the biped said, surprised and pleased.
“Then you will be going away.”
“I suppose I will, yes.” What was the creature getting at?
“I shall be all alone,” Emma said.
“Well,” said the biped awkwardly, “I expect you’ll get used to it.”
“I shall miss you,” Emma said. “Good-by, Fritz.”
“Good-by.”
She turned and went back into her room. The biped stared after her, touched and vaguely disturbed.
From the living room sounded a chime, then a hearty voice, “Eight hundred hours, time for the news! Good morning, this is Reporter Walter Szaborni, at your service. Seven hundred are known dead in a Calcutta earthquake! Two members of the Council of Bavaria have been accused of improper conduct! These and other stories-”
Hurrying into the living room, the biped picked up the control box that lay beside the chair and pressed the channel selector. In the wall screen, the ruddy-faced announcer vanished and was replaced by a beaming elderly lady, eccentrically dressed, who sat at the keyboard of a piano. “For my first selection this morning,” she announced in a heavy Slavic accent, I shall play Morgenstem’s ‘Dawn’ …” Click! She gave way to a muscular young man in a cream-colored leotard, who sat on the floor rotating himself on one buttock. “Just easily back, he said, and then forward -” Click!
“… We bring you the latest development in a case that has all Berlin talking,” said an invisible voice.
THE biped caught his breath: the screen showed a view of the Zoo grounds, moving at a walking pace toward the main building. With a curious shock, turning and looking out the window, past the incurious faces of a few people who stood at the railing, the biped realized what he was about to see. Out there in the early sunshine, walking slowly across the lawn, was a man with a tiny television camera.
“… who claims to be Martin Naumchik, a reporter for ParisSoir,” the voice was saying. At the same moment, the outer door rattled. The biped vacillated a moment, then left the screen and hurried into the office space. It was the keeper with his cart.
“Otto! Have you any message for me?”
“No message. Eat,” said Otto, unloading trays from his cart.
“But, is the press conference really going to be held? Is anyone here yet?”
“Plenty of people,” Otto grunted. “All in good time. Eat.” He walked away.
But eating was out of the question; the biped pushed the food around with his fork, took a bite or two, then gave it up and walked restlessly back and forth in his inner room until, after what seemed hours, the door opened and Otto returned.