Dr. Franklin's Island

by Ann Halam

  He bent his head, pretending to look at something on the control box. I suppose the camera eyes that we had never found were still recording.

  “We don’t want Dr. Franklin to know that you are changing back. Do we?”

  So Skinner was the “friendly technician” that Arnie had told us about. That made sense. Who else but Skinner (or Dr. Franklin) would have access to the antidote infusion?

  All I could do was stare at him.

  He looked at the little screen on his box, tapped some keys, and nodded to himself. Then he leaned down closer to me. “Semi,” he whispered, “it’s time. We have to get you out of here, before it’s obvious what’s happening to you. There’s a way out of the pool. Have you found it? Splash your tail. Once for yes, twice for no.”

  I lay there on the surface, rippling my wings, trying to desperately think what I should do now. Should I trust him? How could I trust him?

  I splashed my tail.

  “Okay,” whispered Skinner. “We’re going to get you out. Listen. Miranda’s been seen soaring above the crater. I’m going to take the motor launch tonight and patrol around the island, ready to get a fix on her exact location, if she gets herself zapped and falls on to the mountainside, on the wrong side of the rim. That’s my excuse for getting away. . . . I’ll be at the east coast jetty, at dawn. Your friend Arnie will be with me. You have to get out of the pool, get to the jetty and wait for me there. I hope you can do that. I’m afraid you’re on your own, I can’t help you. Leave after dark. The cameras in here can’t pick up much after nightfall. This is the best I can do, Semi. Don’t worry about Miranda. We’ll raise a rescue party, and come back for her. Remember, you have to come to the jetty. Don’t take off for the open sea. The change should be easier this time, but I don’t know what it will be like. You may need special care. This is something that’s never been tried before. I’ll be there, with Arnie. We won’t leave without you.”

  He fumbled with his water-sampling gadget. Something slipped from his cupped palm into my pool, making a tiny splash. It was another of those little tubes.

  “That’s your last dose. Take it immediately, then wait for nightfall.” He stood up, wiping his hands furiously on that handkerchief, as if he was trying to wipe away his guilt. “Miranda was right,” he muttered. “I should have left with the two of you, that first night. Now it’s almost too late. No more games, Semi. This is real. I can’t stand to be here, to see what he’s going to do to Miranda—”

  I was doing absolutely nothing. I was an inquisitive ray fish, floating on the surface, watching this human with his funny machine and his funny mumbling. I kept on doing nothing, showing not a sign of “humanlike activity,” until he left.

  I let the tube float while I tried to think. I had no rational reason to trust Skinner. The last time he’d tried to save us he’d let us down badly. I could feel that the doses of powder were doing something to me. If he’d really been giving me the antidote, did that mean the rest of his story was true? But how I could bear to leave without Miranda? What if she came back, and I was gone? I thought about that motor launch and the tracking equipment. I thought about Arnie-the-eavesdropper. I thought I should call him up, but when I tried he didn’t answer, and I realized I didn’t dare to trust “Arnie” anyway. I swam around and around, feeling so alone, trying to figure out a cunning plan that would save me, save Miranda, save Arnie (if he was really still alive!).

  In the end I just crushed the tube, swallowed the powder and waited.

  The orderly came and skimmed the pool, and fed me my plankton.

  I decided I didn’t dare trust the radio telepathy at all anymore. Then I decided I had to try, and I called and called for Miranda, but she didn’t answer. Not a word, not a sign.

  In the afternoon I started to feel ill. I felt hot inside, and shivery outside. If I’d been human, I’d have said I was running a fever. I remembered what my greatgrandmother in Jamaica used to say: “Get out in the good sun, let de heat drive out de fever.” But the sun didn’t warm me. My thoughts weren’t dreamy and slow. They were tangled up and frightening and confused. I tried to remember how happy I had been, cruising around in the water, full of strength and grace, eating plankton as easily as breathing. It was gone. It was as if my mind was a train that had been switched onto a different track. Semi-the-fish was heading off into the distance, and this other Semi was racing back, faster and faster—the girl who had been put through too many horrors and couldn’t take much more.

  I kept thinking of what Skinner had said about me needing special care. What if I was farther on than he realized? I had not seen myself in my bad time. I only knew how it had been for Miranda. I saw her in my mind: Miranda twisted up in agony, her face fallen in, her breastbone bursting out of her chest. Things like that were going to happen to me. Again, soon. If I stayed in my pool, Dr. Franklin would look after me. He’d be angry with me, like a father with a disobedient child. But he would look after me.

  I hid in the shade of the mango tree, and watched the swallows dipping over the water. The sun moved across the sky. My head was aching and the inside of my mouth felt strange and sore. How could “my head” be aching? My head wasn’t a separate thing, stuck on, on a little stalk. It was inside me, part of me. I felt as if my arms were folded up in front of my face, locked stiff and full of pins and needles: but I had no arms. . . . How could my arms and legs feel cramped and trapped? They should flow.

  It was as if my body was being squeezed and knotted into different sections, when it should be all of a piece, one smooth delta-wing. I tried to see if anything was actually happening to Semi-the-fish. But I couldn’t look at myself very well, I could only see the shape of the shadow beneath me in the water. It seemed to be the same as ever.

  I was so scared.

  The seawater is pumped into my pool through the inflow cover. It flows out through the outflow cover. I think the inflow pipe runs together with the outflow, until it reaches underneath the pool to the other side. That would save tunneling through the rock twice. There’ll be pumping machinery, where the inflow and the outflow come out on the beach. I think that will be somewhere hidden, so there isn’t any machinery showing. . . . But how can I know? I’m frightened I’ll push myself through the outflow, and fall into some kind of crushing, thumping, squeezing, metal hell, and then I’ll die.

  I’m going to die anyway. I don’t want to die here, in this concrete box.

  I don’t want Miranda to suffer. If my Miranda is dead, if her human mind is gone forever, I still want to save the creature she’s become. I won’t let them vivisect her.

  At last the dusk fell, and the tropic darkness quickly followed.

  The orderly had cleaned my sluice-opening stick out of the water, but more stuff always fell in. I found another, and took it to the bottom of the pool. My useless back flippers felt different—tender and aching—but stronger, and better able to understand the peculiar human-type orders I was giving them. From what Skinner had said, it seemed he had known all along there was a way out of the pool. Which meant Dr. Franklin must know about it too. What did that mean? How could I tell what kind of game they were playing now? When I levered open the sluice cover again, most likely a lot of alarms would go off, spotlights would come on, and Dr. Franklin would be there by the pool crying “Excellent! Well done, Semi!”

  Or what if Skinner was really trying to help, but he didn’t know? Maybe he just hoped that a manta ray creature the size of a flattened teenager could wriggle down the big outflow pipe. The more I thought about it the more I remembered that Skinner was a real mess, gibbering with remorse, probably drunk too, and even if he meant well, I couldn’t trust him to be thinking straight.

  I had to take the risk. First chance, last chance.

  Like you always said, Miranda, I thought. The next thing we try might work.

  I prized open the cover, folded myself up and shoved myself into that black hole.

  I don’t know if I could have done it if I hadn
’t been so completely desperate. But I put all my strength into that thrust: and I burst through the mouth of the outflow into a wide pipe beyond, like a cork popping out of a bottle.

  The walls were smooth and slippery. I could see nothing. I was frightened that I’d come to somewhere where there was no water to breathe, and I wouldn’t be able to get back. I’d keep sliding on, trapped and choking. It didn’t happen. I came to the end of the straight bit, and then slithered around a bend. There was room enough, but my wings were squashed against the sides. I could hear, ahead of me, a sound like soft thunder.

  A little farther and the water churned around me, and I was falling.

  If I’d had a voice, I would have yelled. My wings flew out wide, instinctively. I was trying to grab at the tunnel sides with the hands I didn’t have. I only hurt myself; I could not get a grip. I was speeding down this steep, slippery tube, in utter blackness, faster and faster. Then I fell again! If I didn’t shriek aloud that time, I certainly shrieked in my mind. But I was still gathering speed, and nothing terrible had happened to me. I could feel that I was in a bigger passageway, still full of water: it seemed to be a natural passage in the rock. I could hear a rushing noise beside me. I kept bumping into something smooth and rounded; that must have been the other pipe, with the water being pumped up from the sea.

  I’d known that I was going to have to descend a long way. I’d thought it would be hard work, wriggling and squeezing. Maybe this was better! I tried to think sensibly, about slowing myself down and being prepared for new dangers, like pumping machinery or projecting rocks and other obstacles. It was impossible. In the end I just flew: whoosh, splash, careering around bends and down chutes, shrieking silently but not even really afraid because it was all happening so fast. At last I fell, or I was poured with the water, over a lip of stone as sleek as polished metal. Then I was in a broader, dark channel, on the flat. There was air above the surface. I could hear machinery chugging somewhere nearby, but I managed to stay away from it.

  I didn’t have to worry about deciding which way to go. The force of the water pulled me onward. I would have known the right direction anyway. The smell of the sea, which was much more than “smell” to my fish-senses, was overwhelming. I floated, barely swimming, still dazed and excited by my wild ride through the mountain, toward a patch of lighter darkness; it grew bigger, and I could see the blurred shapes of trees and rocks outlined against it. I could see my old friends the stars in the sky.

  I drifted out onto the surface of the ocean, and lay there gazing.

  I was free.

  But there was something wrong.

  I turned myself around and looked back. What I saw didn’t make sense, until I remembered to switch some switches and get the view in human format. Then I could see, by starlight, the trees and the swampy mangroves reaching into the water, on either side of the inlet where the pumping machinery was hidden.

  Oh no. This was not the east coast.

  So then I had to orient myself. There was no moon. I had to do it by the blurred stars, and by my fish-senses. I had never studied a map of the island. I vaguely remembered seeing one on the wall in Dr. Franklin’s office the day we were given our lecture about genetic engineering, but I couldn’t remember much about it: a blurred teardrop shape, longer on the east and west than north and south, that was all. I decided I was in the south. The sea was calm, the night was clear. All I had to do was face out to sea, turn left and swim, keeping close to the beach. Then I couldn’t miss the jetty. It couldn’t be more than about ten kilometers or so, nothing to Semi-the-fish.

  I’d been swimming for a few minutes before I thought about sharks.

  By then, I didn’t care. I was having the most magical experience of my life.

  I think sharks are daylight animals, anyway.

  (There’s one good thing about going through horrors, you end up with a fairly casual attitude to what would once have seemed deadly danger. I had been so terrifiedthe one time I saw a big shark in our lagoon, though I was standing on dry land on the coral causeway. Now I was swimming along without a care, thinking: So, a shark may come along and bite my leg off, well, accidents will happen. . . . )

  But I wasn’t thinking about sharks with more than a very small part of my mind. Even my fear for Miranda took second place. There was nothing I could do for her at the moment except swim—and swimming through the deep blue sea, with the stars above me, was completely, totally bliss. It was wonderful, as wonderful as waking up as Semi-the-fish, the first time; only better. Everything was alive. The water was full of movement, sound and light. I try to think of how it felt in human terms, and the nearest I can come is . . . it was like swimming through music. Not loud, wild, music, not that night, but sparkling, dancing music, with a deep steady underbeat, and distant voices weaving in and out; and I was part of this music.

  I was so happy.

  Miranda had never talked much about what it meant to her to fly free. I could guess why. It would have been cruel to tell me, when I was trapped in that concrete box. Now I could understand why she had spent so much time up high, and taken such risks with that stun ring. She wasn’t only gathering information, she was feeling this same joy.

  Joy, that’s the only word for it.

  If only there was a place in the world where we could fly together—

  I had no adventures, nothing attacked me. I followed the dark border of the mangroves, heading for the tip of the island—firmly resisting the tug of the great, wide ocean that called to me from beyond the barrier reef. I had been swimming for maybe half an hour, when something strange happened: but it felt natural as breathing.

  I fell asleep.

  I don’t know for how long I slept. Several hours, anyway.

  I woke up near the surface, feeling very rested and comfortable, and naturally started swimming again. I could see the stars overhead had changed around, and it must have been nearly morning. That was okay, I wasn’t supposed to get to the jetty until dawn. When I’d been swimming for a few minutes, my arms came loose. Those phantom arms inside my fish-body were no longer locked in front of my phantom human face. I could move them, they were free. I was so knocked-out by the experience of swimming in the ocean, I took this easing of the locked-in feeling for granted. And then, to my total amazement, I saw my own hands, rising beside my face. I saw my arms, smoothly pushing through the water. The change wasn’t in my mind. It was real!

  My arms were free, then my legs began to kick—

  Some dark stuff and some whitish stuff streamed away from me into the water, like a shed skin. There was no blood, which was lucky. The sharks in the lagoon would probably have woken up fast if they smelled the blood of fresh human. Yum!

  I thought I must have been dreaming. How could it be this easy?

  Have you ever seen a seedling, a baby weed, shoving up from under a concrete slab? Or pushing through to the sunlight, through four or five centimeters of tarmac? That’s what changing was like for me, the second time. That’s the power that Dr. Franklin had put into his DNA infusions. That’s what the chemistry of life can do.

  At the time I thought maybe I’d gone crazy and I was still Semi-the-fish, having delusions caused by the antidote starting to work. Maybe it was a sign that I’d soon be helplessly twisted up in agony. Either that, or I was asleep and dreaming. But all I could do was swim on. I came up to the surface (I was swimming a few meters down) every few minutes, to check on the creamy line of the waves that rimmed the beach. I saw the sky beginning to pale with the dawn. At last I saw the jetty.

  There was a small motor launch beside it. Skinner had already reached the rendezvous.

  So far so good.

  I dived deep, several meters deep, so I could get close to it unseen.

  The water grew shallow. I was swimming along barely above the smooth sandy bottom by the time the hull of the boat loomed above me. I was still fish enough to have control over my buoyancy. I let myself rise very silently, and checked things out
as well as I could, keeping my head underwater. There were lights in the cabin below the deck, and in the little engine house above, but I couldn’t see anybody on board.

  I slipped around to the stern and scrambled up over the side.

  I was breathing dry air for several breaths before I realized what I was doing. Then I panicked and had to frantically smother a lot of gulping and choking. But there was no need to panic. I could breathe perfectly normally. I sat on the deck, gasping in silent astonishment, and felt myself all over.

  What am I?

  I was a soaking wet teenager, with no clothes . . . no hair, okay, and less ears than I used to have; but with toes, fingernails, teeth, everything.

  Plus four pairs of raised flaps of skin, either side of my throat, that were now sealed tight, because I was breathing dry air.

  I sat there happily amazed, wishing I had some clothes, wondering what I looked like with no hair, wondering what to do next.

  My plan (as far as you can have a plan when you have no idea what’s going to happen to you) had been to reach here, and try to make sure I wasn’t walking (or swimming) into a trap. If I saw any sign of those uniformed goons, or if anything else looked wrong, I’d planned to head for the open sea. Go on trying to reach Miranda by radio telepathy. Swim to the mainland, try to convince someone I was human, and come back here with a rescue party. . . . Of course I hadn’t meant to climb aboard Skinner’s motorboat like this. I’d thought I would be Semi-the-fish. But this was much better! There didn’t seem to be any goons in uniform. If Skinner was on his own, Arnie and I would easily be able to overpower him if he had any plans to double-cross us. Then we’d use his tracking equipment to trace Miranda, we’d get her off the island and—

  The truth was, the unbelievable speed and ease of the change had completely addled my brains, although I didn’t realize it. I thought I was still a big strong manta ray with superpowers. I thought I could do anything! Crush that fishing boat!