by Ann Halam
“Maybe I’m not really shy. Maybe I just don’t like people. I think I’m horrible.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re the best friend I ever had. I always knew you were the strong one, inside,” said Miranda. “Now I can see it, that’s all.”
“If you were always scared to death and never showed it,” I said, “you’re even braver than I thought.”
Miranda let go of my hand and pushed back her hair, and she seemed like my Miranda again. Only more . . . even more my friend.
“You know what,” she said, with a wry grin. “It really is wonderful to be able to fly.”
I nodded. “This may sound weird, but it’s wonderful to be a fish, too.”
“And we have this telepathy stuff. That’s another good thing. But we’ll have to learn to handle it better.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. It’s not totally a good thing to be able to see through all your friend’s defenses. Or to have her see through all your illusions about yourself, either. “They didn’t tell you how to work it at all?”
“If they did, I don’t remember. All I remember is Dr. Franklin saying we’d be free to talk to each other. They wouldn’t be able to listen in.”
I laughed, and Miranda nodded. “Another lie,” I said. “I bet they’re listening now.”
We sat there in silence, in the middle of our white cloud, thinking of our terrible, unbelievable, horrible situation. “Maybe it’s not so bad,” whispered Miranda. “Maybe it’s going to be okay. Remember what he said, when he used to come to the fake hotel room? About interplanetary travel? Remember he said that you could be an ambassador to a world where there was only ocean? And I could be sent to a planet where the sentient beings could fly, and we’d be able to deal with the aliens on their own terms? What if that’s going to happen? What if he knows about a secret space program, and we’re the astronauts? I mean, I know it sounds impossible. But he’s done other impossible things.”
I felt so sorry for her. She was talking the way she used to talk, to keep me going, to keep me from crawling into a corner, screaming. But that time was over now. Here in the white place, I could hear that she was trying to convince herself, inventing a pitiful fantasy as much for her own sake as for mine. Poor Miranda.
“I don’t want to visit another planet,” I said. “I don’t care if it’s impossible or not. I don’t care if Dr. Franklin has built his own private spaceship. I just want to go home.”
It may sound ridiculous, seeing as I’d been turned into a monster, but that was what I still wanted. I thought of my brother coming down to the edge of the sea, and . . . patting me on my big slimy back. Or something. The idea brought tears to my imaginary human eyes; but it brought real hope as well. I was still alive. If we could escape from this evil genius and his horrible island, I could at least go home.
“Well, yeah,” said Miranda, slowly. “Of course. We’re still going to try and escape. We’re never going to give up. Never.”
We looked at each other.
Miranda didn’t say it, but it was as if her thought came straight into my mind.
If she could get out of the cage, she could fly away. Not me. I was stuck. I couldn’t get to the sea. A fish can’t climb fences, a fish can’t tunnel through a mountainside.
I felt very stupid for not having realized this before.
“I’ve had enough radio telepathy for now,” I said, after another silence. “Do you know how to turn it off?”
“I suppose we’ll have to try and find out.”
It was like adjusting to my new vision. I flipped some mental switches, trying to find the right ones. Miranda’s face grew blurred. She faded out.
And we were gone. I to the water, she to the air.
Day Eighty (approximately!)
We found out how to use the radio telepathy after a few tries. We discovered that if we tried too hard (like mental shouting), we would end up in the white place. If we kept calm we could talk to each other. It was like calling someone on the phone. We’d say each other’s names, in our minds, and it worked like dialing a number. When we’d learned how to do that, I told Miranda about waking up and calculating that it was Day Seventy-eight. She thought that was hilarious. It was the first time I’d heard her really laugh in ages. But we didn’t care. It was our count, nobody else’s. What did it matter how wrong we were?
The intense version of radio telepathy, when we have human bodies in the white place, is a bit too strange. But we’ve decided to meet there together last thing at night, the same as always, and we’ve started the imaginary notch-cutting ceremony again. So now it is Day Eighty.
One very good thing is that we don’t have to make any effort to be our animal selves. Miranda-the-bird and Semi-the-fish know everything they need to know. They eat, sleep, move, react like the animals they are. All we have to do is learn to sort of keep our human thoughts out of the way, and everything just happens. Miranda says it’s like having dual nationality. You’re officially two people, but you don’t feel anything odd.
In ways I’m more like a normal fish than Miranda is like a normal bird. I don’t have any human limbs. I know what I look like, because Miranda has described me to me: plus I can see my shape, in the shadow that glides under me through the water. I look more or less like a manta ray, the creature they call a devilfish. Real manta rays can get to be six meters or more across. They’re nonviolent, but if they are badly provoked, they can leap out of the ocean and even crush a small fishing boat. Or so legend says, in the Caribbean. I’m not as big as that. I wish I was. Then I wish Dr. Franklin would come in here for a swim. I would leap on him and crush him against the tiles. But I’m only a ray fish the size of a flattened teenager.
My back is dark blue, with a sheen like shot silk. My underside is pearly white. I have a body that stretches smoothly out into two pectoral fins like wings, a tail that I can lash and splash in a very satisfying manner when I’m on the surface, eyes up at the front, and a wide mouth that filters plankton from the sunlit water of my pool. Oh, and I have two flippers at the base of my tail, on the underside of me, which must once have been my feet; but I don’t use them much. I don’t like them. They feel fidgety and strange, like rather useless people hanging around looking for a job, but there’s nothing for them to do.
My pool is four meters deep, all over. (The fish-Semi can judge distances very precisely. I don’t know how, she just can: and then the girl-Semi can translate what the fish-Semi knows into meters and so on; it’s one of those dual nationality things.) There is a viewing window in a sunken passage at one end, where humans (such as the orderly who pours live plankton into the pool for me to eat) can stand and watch me swimming about. I don’t like being watched, but fortunately I don’t want to go down to that level much. I’m not a bottom-living fish. I like the sunlit water. And of course, I like to stay near Miranda. We don’t talk to each other on our mental radio as much as you’d think. When we were in the fake hotel room, we used to ignore the fact that Dr. Franklin had us under surveillance. We feel different about that now. Maybe it’s because we’re so much more helpless. But at least we can see each other, and be company for each other.
We’re no longer human.
We’re no longer part of an experiment, even an evil, crazy experiment.
We’re failed leftovers, like the rest of the animals in Dr. Franklin’s zoo.
But it isn’t entirely horrible. The other good thing about being changed, besides not having to learn how to swim and eat and so on, is that our minds have been changed too.
The honest truth is, the fish-Semi part of me would be completely happy swimming, and measuring things, and thinking long, deep, dreamy sunlit thoughts . . . if it wasn’t that I was stuck in this rotten little tiny pool. I know Miranda feels the same. She loves being a bird, she hates being a bird in a cage. It’s strange. Before the change, we’d have thought that losing our human feelings, becoming mutant-monsters in our minds would have been the worst horror imaginable. In fact it t
urns out to be the only thing that makes life possible. The pain of loss, the pain of being parted from our families, is something we’ve had to live with for a long time: and it’s still there. But there’s no disgust and horror at being monsters. It isn’t even so bad not being able to talk together. Often when we were castaways, we’d spend hours together each doing our separate things, hardly saying a word. We do the same in our enclosure.
What do animals do with themselves all day? A lot of nothing, basically.
Miranda hops and flaps around in the trees and bushes that grow in the border around my pool, plays about with twigs and flowers, and eats the fruit and stuff the orderly leaves for her. Or she flies up and down in the open air above the branches; or she perches in the roof and spies out over the compound. I glide around, I swim up and down, I filter plankton (so far, the strangest thing about being a fish: eating is like breathing. I don’t feel as if I’m doing anything). I float on the surface, feeling the sun.
I have the strangest feeling that we could live like this, and be fairly content.
If only we weren’t prisoners.
Sometimes, I accidentally do something that makes me feel how strong I really am, and how fast I could really move, and it’s amazing.
I think, No wonder I nearly died, turning into this amazing creature!
But we are prisoners.
Every day the orderlies bring food, clear the remains of yesterday’s food, and skim the pool. They’re careful, but they have to open the gate to the enclosure. It’s big enough for Miranda to run through, though nothing like wide enough for her to spread her wings.
She never tries it.
We haven’t talked about the fact that Miranda can get away but I can’t. There’s no need to spell it out. I know she knows.
The plan would have to be that she leaves and somehow fetches help.
Somehow.
Day Eighty-two
Today Dr. Franklin finally came to visit. He turned up about halfway through the morning. I was floating in the middle of the pool, dreaming, when I was warned by Miranda, who came zooming down from the peak of the steel-mesh roof. She croaked loudly in her harsh bird-voice, and in my head I heard her say, Semi! Watch out, here comes the boss.
My eyes are at the front of my . . . my me, my delta shape. I glided over to the side, watching as if from the periscope of a submarine. In my mind I flipped the switches that had to be switched, to translate the foreshortened fish-me view of the enclosure fence into a human-type image. I watched carefully as Dr. Franklin came up to the gate. I was hoping I’d glimpse the keys he pressed on the lockpad. I hadn’t managed to do that when the orderly came in, not yet. If we could get to know the combination, Miranda could easily make keystrokes with her beak, and have that gate open. Which wouldn’t do me much good, but at least she would be free.
Dr. Franklin didn’t open the gate. He was carrying a folding chair. He unfolded it, about halfway along the fence, sat down, and took what looked like a mobile phone from his pocket. Both of us came and watched him: me in the water, Miranda pacing on the tiles by the side of the pool. She held her birdlike head on one side, one fierce eye fixed on me, and one on the mad scientist.
“Welcome to your new world,” he said. “Miranda, Semi.” He settled his floppy sun hat more securely on his thick gray hair, and stared at us greedily. “Amazing,” he muttered. “Amazing!” An incredibly smug expression spread over his face. “A truly extraordinary breakthrough. One day the world will share my triumph. One day, I will be able to reveal what I have achieved! But in the meantime,” he added, with a horrible smirk, “there is much that can be done. Much that can be learned, from these two first successes.”
Miranda shrieked. I lifted my tail and splashed it hard on the top of the water.
We were saying: What do you mean, successes? You’ve turned us into monsters, not superhumans. Now what are you going to do? Keep us locked up here forever?
Dr. Franklin shifted his chair, cleared his throat, and settled a little farther back from the fence. “I wonder how much you can still understand of normal human speech. It’s rather difficult to tell. But I know you have discovered your radio telepathy. I know that you are making use of it! Neither of you ever asked me how you would be able to communicate in your transgenic forms. You never did show much curiosity, not even you, Miranda, my star pupil. I was surprised at that. How will humans who have been altered so much that they cannot talk be able to work together? How will they be able to stay human? You didn’t even think of that, apparently. But I had identified the problem, and I have solved it!”
I was amazed that he had the nerve to come and chat to us like this, after locking us up, putting us in straitjackets, turning us into monsters. Of course he was mad. But I suppose this is also the way normal people treat normal animals, a lot of the time. We keep zoo animals in cages, we keep dogs and horses as servants, we keep cows and pigs and sheep to kill and eat: and yet we somehow expect them to like us.
“Yes,” Dr. Franklin went on, happily, “I have made you telepathic. Yet another dream of humanity that I have caused to come true. You are very highly privileged. You have left me far behind. I envy your powers, tremendously!”
Huh, I thought, bitterly. You haven’t got a microchip in your brain. You haven’t been turned into a monster. You stayed human, and you treated us like guinea pigs.
He stared at us. We stared back, like dumb animals.
“I wonder what’s really going on in those heads,” he muttered. “Difficult to say, difficult to say. There is certainly human brain activity, but the animal traits are very strong. Perhaps too strong.” For a moment he looked worried. Then he perked up. “But that’s good! I will be testing pyschological survival in extreme conditions. Which is exactly what I planned to do.”
Miranda spread her wings, and flew up into the branches of a tree.
Dr. Franklin stopped talking and gazed at her in wonder. “Amazing,” he muttered again. “Amazing! I have created flight!” He sounded so pleased with himself, and so completely oblivious of what he’d done to us, I seriously wanted to kill him.
“Well, well. You both seem to have adapted excellently, so far. Physically you are in very good shape, psychologically . . . hmm. We shall see. Now for the next phase of the experiment. In a few days, I am going to open the aviary. You’ll be able to fly free, Miranda.”
Miranda shrieked.
It was a yell of surprise. I don’t think she even meant to startle him. But Dr. Franklin jumped up, clutching at his hat. The chair jerked backward and tipped over.
I saw the expression on his face. He looked scared.
In a flash, I saw Miranda the way she must look to a human being. A great birdlike creature with strangely human limbs, beautiful but nightmarish. Big as an eagle, with wings that could break your arm at a stroke, a hooked beak, strong taloned feet as dextrous as human hands. I’d seen the orderly being very careful about opening the enclosure gate. I’d thought it was to be sure she didn’t get out. He was probably scared too. For a moment I felt pleased. Good, I thought. Serves them all right. But that was a stupid reaction. Dr. Skinner had been afraid of us from the start, because we made him feel so guilty. It hadn’t done us any good. They’re afraid because we are monsters, I thought. Even the man who made us thinks we are monsters. I didn’t dare to look at Miranda, in case she was thinking the same thing.
“You’ll be ringed and tagged, of course,” the scientist went on, having recovered his nerve. “If you try to fly out of the valley you’ll get a shock. If you persist, or if you interfere with my staff in any way, you will get a stronger shock, enough to stun you and render you unable to fly. We’ll have to come out and find you and pick you up. Other than that, you’ll be free to do as you please. What will happen, I wonder. Will you stay with your friend, who cannot leave her pool? Or will your animal instincts take over, and will you fly away and become a strange new part of this island’s wildlife? We shall see, we shall see. . . . I
believe that there are still two human minds in there. What I want to know is whether your strong friendship, together with the internal radio link I have given you, will enable you to remain human, in this challenging situation. I will be observing your behavior carefully. You supported each other on the beach, and through your treatment, most remarkably. Let’s see if you can hold on to your humanity now.”
He stood up and folded his chair. “That’s the vital question. Perhaps you will fail, you will fall by the wayside, and become no more than the couple of exotic animals that you appear. It matters little. I count this first trial a major success, even if it goes no further. Yes, almost more successful than I had dared to hope! Already, you have served the future of the race, Semi and Miranda. You should be very proud.”
Miranda shrieked again, and launched herself into the air. She swept into the roof of our big cage with one beat of her powerful wings, and went hurtling to and fro, from one end of the enclosure to the other, crying wildly. Dr. Franklin stood staring at her. His mouth had dropped open. For a moment he almost looked horrified, as if even he couldn’t quite believe what he had done to the teenage girl Miranda used to be. His star pupil. Then he frowned and shook his head, and hurried away, clutching his hat with one hand, his chair with the other.
chapter nine
On Day Eighty-three, Dr. Franklin came to the enclosure with two orderlies. The uniformed men came into the cage, armed with long metal rods and a big net. They threw the net over Miranda, and held her down. Then Dr. Franklin came into the cage, wearing heavy gloves, reached through the net and fitted a black rubbery ring like a thick watch strap on her leg. There was no need to throw the net over Miranda, or poke her with those rods. She wasn’t doing anything, she didn’t try to resist. But the men behaved as if she was simply a dangerous animal, and Dr. Franklin did nothing to stop them. He treated her the same way. It was horrible to watch: it made me feel sick.
But after it was done, the men went off and came back with a mobile crane. They unfastened a big section of the steel mesh roof, and Miranda flew free.
