Billy, who was taller and could see better over the top of the steering wheel, drove. As soon as they were safely out of Fig Tree Gully Road, he slowed down to take a look at the fuel gauge.
“Full!” he and Tom cried in unison.
An hour later, they were almost at the lake and saw that lights were burning in the outlying house at the Research.
“Should we use another gate?” Tom asked.
“Why?”
“Because we’ve used this one twice already. The guards might be watching for us.”
“We’ll park outside and leave the gate open,” Billy said. “If they chase us we’ll run for the gate, jump in the van, and drive off. They’ll never catch us.”
“What if they’ve got guns?”
“We’ll duck.” Billy clashed the gears with vigor as he rounded the corner of the fence onto the last stretch of road.
It was a long walk from where they left the van, near the base of the mountain, and by the time they had passed the airfield Tom’s legs were tired. “It’s too far,” he said.
“Just to that house,” Billy urged. The house glowed through the dark enticingly, its latticed verandas making a pattern of light like a Chinese lantern. When they reached the garden, they ran forward on tiptoe, looking up at the veranda. There was no sound of voices or smell of cigarettes. “They’re all asleep. Let’s go up,” Billy said.
On a table on the veranda Billy found a pair of binoculars. “Hey, Tom! I can see everything!”
“Shh!” his brother whispered. He did not want to go inside the house and was already descending the steps.
Billy swept the binoculars across the landscape. “It’s all green. I can see a Land Cruiser parked near those buildings where we went before, and three men.…”
“Come on!” Tom said.
Downstairs, they spent a few minutes in the cabin of Sonja’s Land Cruiser, which was unlocked, examining its sound system and making driving noises.
“Let’s look in there,” Tom said.
The laundry was boring, but the door next to it was open, and they saw with astonishment the Inclin-ator that ran alongside the stairs.
“You keep watch with the binoculars,” Billy said.
Tom found a position in the garden from where he could see the laboratory complex through the night sights.
Lek had gone to sleep after her evening meal but woke a few hours later, her teeth rattling with fright from a dream. For a long while she lay awake in the unfriendly dark, feeling cut off from herself, unable to think clearly and knowing she must try to go back to sleep, but her thoughts whirled obsessively around what Freddie had told her that morning.
“I’ve been stupid,” she reproached herself.
During the afternoon, the boys had asked her, “Have you ever taken an aspirin? Have you had an injection against smallpox? Do you wash your hair with shampoo? Have you ever taken a pill for diarrhea?” When she said yes, they yelled with derision. “All those things were tested on animals to make them safe for your She felt ashamed of herself for not understanding what sacrifices the animals made for human beings. She had always considered things from the human point of view. When she was kind to animals it was because she wanted to gain merit in heaven for herself, she realized. Now she wanted to thank the animals for what they did for her.
She got up, pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater, and walked through the hushed, cold garden that separated her cabin from the house. During the day, it was a rule that the upstairs door must be kept locked, but since she intended to spend only a few minutes in there, just long enough to say thank you to Lucy and Sailor, she didn’t bother shutting it.
The chimps were curled up asleep in their separate nesting cages, their hands and flat feet tucked in, their heads curled into their chests, so they looked like folded woolly black socks. They woke when she turned on the light. Lucy moved over on haunches and knuckles to talk to her, raising her hand to make the sign that meant “Let’s groom each other.” Lek said, “Thank you, Lucy.” Lucy’s eyes yearned at her with a look of wanting to talk back. Her silence made Lek cry again. She rested her head against the wire where Lucy could reach it, and settled down for a grooming session. Big black fingers worked delicately through the roots of her hair, bringing on a drowsy sense of well-being. She was still resting against the cage when Billy walked in.
Chapter Thirteen
Let scrambled to her feet and pressed the emergency button. In the house above, Sonja woke with a leap, while up at the condominiums, the siren hee-hawing in Parker’s bedroom roused people in adjoining houses.
By the time Sonja had reached the monitor in the kitchen, all she could see in U-1 was Lek, fully clothed, standing in the Big Lab, her hands held to her mouth in fright. Sonja did not pause to dress but rushed downstairs in her nightgown, an old one she wore only when John was not around.
She grabbed Lek by the arm. “What are you doing here? Why did you set off the alarm?” she yelled.
“I saw a ghost,” Lek whispered.
Sonja smacked her across the face. “Tell me the truth! What were you doing?”
Lek held her cheek. “I don’t know.”
“Get in there.” Sonja shoved Lek toward the open door of the Animal Room, but suddenly she had another idea. “You need to be out of sight,” she said. “There’ll be people wanting to come in here in a minute. You go into Level 2.” The girl balked, but Sonja shoved her hard. “It’s not dangerous. You’re to vanish until the fuss is over.”
She pulled down the blind on the inside of the Animal Room so that the chimps could not be seen through the one-way glass. Then she turned on all the lights, adjusted her nightgown and her expression for the security guards, and was ready when two of them came pounding down the stairs, squinting at the white glare of neon.
“It’s okay!” she exclaimed. “But thank you. Thank you for coming so quickly.”
They darted alert, inquisitive glances in all directions, paying no attention to her.
“I’m afraid it’s just a malfunction in the alarm,” Sonja said.
One of them looked toward the Animal Room doors.
“I’ve checked in there. I’ve looked everywhere, in fact.”
“The door hasn’t been tampered with?”
“No.”
“You unlocked it yourself?”
Sonja nodded.
The guards glanced at each other and shrugged. “Okay. Hope you can get back to sleep.”
“Thank you again.” She shepherded them out of the Big Lab to the staff room, where a blue plastic tub of ice cream was on the table, with a spoon beside it. It had been there long enough for condensation to form and trickle down its sides. One man raised an eyebrow. “Get hungry, did you?”
Sonja stared at him. She had not noticed the ice cream tub when she rushed in to question Lek.
“Oh—yes. I think the fright I had … I had to have something for my blood sugar.”
“Know what you mean,” the other one said. His gaze rested lovingly on a six-pack of beer on top of the fridge.
“Would you like a beer?”
“Wooden say no.”
They cracked the tops off the cans and lifted them thirstily to their lips. The big-bellied one winked. “Don’t tell Joe. He’s a bit … you know.” He flicked on his walkie-talkie, but from underground it would not work.
The three of them were sitting at the table, chatting in a desultory way, when Parker came down the steps three at a time, wild-haired, wearing a brown fishing pullover over striped cotton pajama pants.
The cheap pajamas, his unshaven cheeks and disheveled hair, gave him the look of a derelict. “God almighty, woman! What’s going on?” he said.
“Malfunction in your alarm, Doc,” a guard said.
Parker continued to stare at Sonja, hoping to read from her expression if something was wrong, but her acting defeated him. He turned to glare at the guard. “What are you doing here?”
The men finished their beer
s and got to their feet.
“It’s okay, Doc,” the younger one said. “The alarm went off. We weren’t far away, so we came and checked it out. No problem.” They retreated toward the stairs. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Sonja called.
Parker followed them upstairs, where the security man who had driven him over from the condos was sitting inside another Land Cruiser. The first pair of guards went to chat with the one who had just arrived. Parker managed to smile as he called good night to them.
In his absence upstairs, Sonja rushed to the washbasin to splash water on her face and try to fluff up her hair. She hated her husband to see her without makeup. In the cabinet she found some toothpaste, which she rubbed around her gums. The splash of water and the fluffing had helped—but I still look a fright, she thought. As she peered at her reflection in the mirror, she felt a wave of hatred for Lek. It’s her fault I’ve been humiliated, Sonja thought; forced to appear in this horrible nightdress in front of John and those louts from security.
“Your little Thai friend set off the alarm,” she said when Parker returned. “I hid her in Level 2 before the guards arrived.”
“She’ll have to go,” he muttered. His instincts told him Sonja was in a dangerous mood. Did she see me squeezing Lek’s breast yesterday? he wondered.
“If you ask me, what happened to Carolyn Williams should happen to her.”
“What? Murdered?”
“No. Cut her vocal cords. That’d shut her up.”
“How did you find that out?”
“At a confidential briefing for directors.” Suddenly she covered her mouth with her hand to suppress a gush of laughter. “Imagine.” She tittered. “Imagine a woman whose vocal …” She opened her mouth wide, as if screaming, then shut it. The laughter in her chest made a farting noise through her lips. Parker stared, fascinated. She opened her mouth again, this time grabbing at her throat, uttering strangled squeaks. Her face grew red, her eyes shone with merriment. He was enthralled. A moment ago, he had been frightened; now he was laughing with her, and at her, thinking, You’ll never know what Carolyn and I used to do. Then he wondered, Can I ask Sonja to let me do it to her? He stepped forward and took her hands, smiling down at her meaningfully.
“Why don’t you lock Level 2, and we’ll go upstairs,” he said.
Tom was standing in the garden, watching everything through the night-sight binoculars, when the alarm went off. We’ll be caught, he thought. Moments later, Billy came running along the road through the garden. “Billy!” Tom called. “Here!”
The elder boy paused.
“I’m in here.” Tom was behind a banksia tree. Its saw-toothed leaves scraped his arm as he grabbed at his brother. Billy was panting so hard that for a few seconds he could not speak.
Then he whispered hoarsely, “They’ve got little grillers in there!”
Tom’s eyes shone.
“There was a lady who looked a bit like mum. She was patting one.”
Tom gaped. “What did she say?”
Just then all the lights in the house went on, and they heard someone running down the stairs. “Quick!” Billy said. They drew back behind the banksia.
“That’s a lady I’ve seen in the news agent’s,” Tom said.
They watched her run under the house and disappear.
“We better go,” Billy said.
“No! I wanna see the grillers.”
They crept back toward the house, but suddenly a beam of light illuminated the branches of a tree in front of them. From the direction of the lab complex, which was on higher ground, headlights were boring through the dark. Without a word, the boys turned and ran back through the garden, dashing across the road and striking out over the paddocks toward the fence.
“What if there’s snakes?” Tom whimpered.
When they had gone two hundred meters, they stopped and looked back. Nobody was following them, but another Cruiser was on its way to the house.
“When they leave we can go back,” Tom said.
“No!” Billy replied fiercely. “Not tonight. It’s too late.”
His younger brother started to cry. “It’s not fair! I didn’t see them.”
“Tom!” Billy said. “It’s too late”
Tom gave a loud sniff and sat down.
“Get up!”
“I’m tired,” he sobbed. “It’s not fair.”
Billy hunkered down beside his brother. “We’ll come back another night. I’ll stay on watch, and you can go down and see them.”
“Was she really like mum?” Tom asked.
“Kind of. But with straight hair.”
“She might give us one,” Tom said.
“What?”
“A griller.”
“She might.”
“We’d look after it properly. We would, wouldn’t we?”
“You bet! We’d promise Grandma.…”
They got up and walked toward the fence, planning where they would house the baby gorilla. They were so excited they did not see, even though the moonlight was quite bright, the thin naked man standing not far from the van, observing them as they climbed inside.
Sonja returned to U-1 later that night, holding John’s hand, feeling strangely powerful. She could not say she had enjoyed herself physically, but she’d enjoyed what had happened psychologically, as it were. By allowing John to indulge his little fantasy, she had felt a control over him that was utterly delicious. To rule, but not to dominate: that’s my strategy, she told herself.
For his part, Parker was feeling indulgent toward his wife. A flood of unfamiliar affection for her made him squeeze her small, bony hand as they descended the stairs side by side. Both of them were dressed now, ready to interview Lek. John was wearing his favorite brown corduroy trousers, his fishing pullover, and a pair of sneakers. Sonja had put on linen trousers, a shirt and jacket, and a dash of eau de toilette.
In the corridor outside Level 2, they masked and gowned in silence. Parker unlocked the door, then turned to Sonja. “In case she’s done something silly, you wait here,” he said.
Above the mask, Sonja’s eyes widened until the whites showed above and below her pupils. “What could she do!”
“I don’t know. But …”
“Take something with you.”
“What?”
“The chimp prod!” She turned and dragged open the door out to the Big Lab. A few moments later, she reappeared with the implement they used to control the apes if they became violent. It was half a meter long and gave an electric shock, like a cattle prod.
Holding it in one hand, Parker leaned his shoulder on the door to the high-containment lab, slowly letting his weight overcome the negative air pressure. Sonja stood behind him, alert, ready for Lek to spring out.
The girl was lying on the floor with her eyes closed. “Oh, God!” Parker murmured. “She’s injected herself with something!” There was a whole pharmacy in the drug cabinet. Suddenly Lek opened her eyes. “Get up,” he said. She scrambled to her feet. “Have you done something to yourself?” he demanded. She shook her head.
Sonja, watching from the doorway, stepped inside. She had checked her appearance in the mirror in the corridor and was delighted at how mysterious she looked, gowned and masked in blue cotton, like a surgeon. Her inscrutable look, on top of her new power over John, gave her a sense of superiority toward Lek. All that time, Sonja realized with surprise, she had felt intimidated by Lek—by her straight gaze (most un-Oriental, one would have thought), by the way she wrinkled her nose in disgust at the sight or smell of non-vegetarian food. Beneath the mask, a smile flickered on Sonja’s lips.
“We’ll go outside,” John said.
“No! Let’s stay in here,” Sonja interjected.
His shoulders moved impatiently. “I suppose, now we’re here …”
She did not wait. “Now, Lek: you tell us exactly why you were in the Big Lab at night and why you called the guards,” she ordered.
Lek
said nothing.
“Go on,” Parker urged.
She gave another sullen shake of her head.
“Don’t you defy me!” Sonja said. “Tell us why you were in the lab.”
“I want back to Thailand,” Lek muttered.
“What were you doing?” Anger was making Sonja’s face turn red.
“Nothing,” Lek said. “I doing nothing. Then I see ghost.”
“Ghost!” Sonja exclaimed. “You saw a ghost! What ghost?”
Lek shook her head.
“Was it a woman ghost or a man ghost?” Parker asked. Lek shrugged.
“Was it the ghost of that woman who was murdered three weeks ago?” Sonja put in.
Parker felt a thrill. Now that the question had been asked, it seemed obvious that Lek had imagined she had seen the ghost of Carolyn Williams. He turned to smile at his wife, whose excited glance held his for a moment.
“No woman,” Lek said. “Boy.”
“A boy?”
Lek nodded. “Black-black,” she said, and grimaced. “Bery dark. Maybe demon.”
Parker gestured to his wife to step aside so they could confer. They skirted the dissection table with its bone saw and plastic tent and strolled toward the back of Level 2, where there was a large negative-airflow cabinet. “I think she’s going mad,” he whispered.
Sonja nodded.
“We shouldn’t try to question her any more. We should calm her down, and I’ll phone Otto tomorrow. Why don’t you take her back to her cabin and make her a cup of Ovaltine?”
“Whatever you say, my love.”
I’ll do that to Sonja more often, he thought.
It was three o’clock in the morning by the time they got Lek back to her cabin and into bed. Parker accompanied the women only as far as the cabin’s front door before making a diplomatic withdrawal. While Sonja was fussing with the girl, he went upstairs, poured himself a whiskey, and, despite the cold, went to sit on the veranda. It was one of those still inland nights when the air seemed composed of some perfect, subtle substance that, on touching living things, revived them. He breathed in and looked up at the sky. Stars were not as visible as on some nights because of the Easter moon, which would be full in another day or so. Its light was falling on the lake in a long white ramp that wavered slightly along the edges and stretched almost to the foreshore. Suddenly he sat upright. He had heard something and thought he saw a pale-colored vehicle driving without headlights past the northern fence. He reached behind to the shelf where they kept the night-sight binoculars. They were not there. Parker got up and turned on the veranda light. The binoculars had vanished.
White Eye Page 17
