by Ann Halam
I didn’t answer. I was afraid to trust my instincts. But I couldn’t leave without looking for him. I didn’t have time for this, and I was terrified it was another trap, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t know my way around the science blocks, but I came to a corridor I recognized and from there it was easy. There was no one around, no one at all. Everyone must have been out in the courtyards, chasing after all those escaped animals . . . and Miranda. The building with the prison ward in it wasn’t locked. I found my way to the corridor outside that room with the beds surrounded by bars.
The door was locked.
So it was no use. If Arnie was in there, I’d have to leave him.
But wait, wait. There was something I knew, something I remembered!
“In a bad situation, gather information and hang on to it if you can. Anything you find out may be useful.” Thank you, Miranda, for telling me that! I quickly found the panel in the wall that I’d seen Skinner open the night he tried to help us escape. It slid aside. I switched off the prison ward’s security system. The door to the ward came open when I pushed it. It was a thick, heavy door. As soon as it moved, I could hear something inside the room thumping and banging, like a big animal.
All the doors to the cages were standing open. I’d released all the locks. In the one cage that wasn’t empty, I saw something limbless and gleaming, strapped to a steel bed frame. It was thick as my waist, and folded up in a figure of eight. It looked huge. It had a pattern of dark scales along the sides of its pale body, and a cap of wires strapped to its head. There was a computer and a monitor and some other high-tech hospital machinery on a workstation table. The snake was writhing furiously, fighting against heavy-duty flexible bands that held it down.
Its large golden eyes stared at me, the pupils slits of fury. Its mouth, a reptilian line without lips or teeth, was gaping, a choked hissing sound came from its throat. There was nothing, nothing I could recognize. You couldn’t tell it had ever been human.
“Arnie?” I whispered, forgetting I didn’t need to speak aloud. “Is that you, Arnie?”
“Get me out of here!” howled the voice in my mind.
“Okay, okay, I’ll try!”
The snake had stopped fighting as soon as I spoke its human name. It gave a sort of long sigh. The golden eyes stared, showing no emotion. The voice in my mind said: “You’ll have to switch off the setup, or you’ll kill me if you try to get the wires off my head. Do what I say. Don’t make any stupid mistakes, okay?”
I tapped the keys, as he told me. Then I went up to the bed. I couldn’t help hesitating.
What if I killed him? What if he killed me? This could be another trap.
“Semi,” gasped the voice in my head. “It is me. I’m in here. Please—”
“What if I kill you?”
“Choice between that and staying strapped up like this, it’s not a big worry!”
So I unfastened the bands that held the cap, and pulled it off him. He was okay. We both breathed a sigh of relief. As quickly as I could with my fumbling newborn hands, I released the straps that held him to the frame. Arnie-the-snake exploded off the bed, coiled himself and struck at the bed frame, at the cap of wires, at that stack of computer equipment. It didn’t take him any time at all to reduce the lot to twisted metal and plastic rubble. He was immensely strong. If Miranda was built for the air, and me for the ocean, this transgenic human had been built for earth and rock. He flowed like lava.
He was very scary.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Arnie, in my head, his animal body rearing up so he could look into my face. “I didn’t like those machines, anything wrong with that?”
“Nothing!” I gasped. “N-Nothing! Arnie, Miranda’s in the compound.” I didn’t know how much he knew of what had been going on. “She flew away, but she’s come back. She let the animals out, as a diversion, but the men are all after her, they’re going to catch her.”
“Come on then, let’s go!” Arnie-the-snake dropped to the floor and shot away. I stumbled after him. We hurried down the corridors, following the same route as when Dr. Skinner had tried to help Miranda and me to escape, and reached the door to the zoo courtyard. Dr. Franklin’s zoo was a mess. There were orderlies trying to round up the animals. The capybara with the human eyes and lips was blundering about, shaking its head. Parrots with the tattered human hands among their breast feathers were flying around screeching wildly. The bats with the human legs fluttered and twittered, free but miserable in the sunlight. Piglets were running, squealing. The big wild sow was at bay in a corner between two buildings, a couple of fallen bodies in uniform suggesting she’d already fought off one attack. Some deer with strange-looking heads were galloping about. No sign of Miranda, no sign of Skinner or Dr. Franklin. No one had spotted Arnie and me yet.
“What’ll we do?” gasped Arnie.
“I don’t know! Skinner said, ‘Head for the jetty.’ I think the motor launch is still there—”
“Skinner!” Arnie-the-snake’s golden eyes glared at me. “That guy keeps helping us, and then betraying us. Do you think we can trust him now?”
“I don’t know, Arnie! I know he’s weak, but I think deep down he’s on our side—”
Then, with a flurry like wings, Miranda was there in our minds.
“Hey, you two! Get out of the compound! The boat is still there! Look after yourselves, I’m okay, I’ll meet you at the boat!”
Which way should we run? In a moment we’d be spotted. My head was spinning, there were black dots in front of my eyes, and suddenly I knew I wasn’t going to run anywhere. My legs were about to fold under me.
“Arnie, I can’t do it. You’ll have to go without me.”
“What’s up with you?” he snapped. Typical sympathetic Arnie.
“I just went through the change again. It was easier, but it takes it out of you.”
“Oh yeah. You’re human again. I getcha. It was tough work, huh?” His snake head whipped to and fro. “Can you drive?” said the voice in my mind.
“Uh, what good . . . I can drive a quad bike, I suppose—”
“Then we’re in business!”
The electric cart the orderlies used for delivering food to the animals was standing near the doorway where we were lurking. I jumped into it, Arnie-the-snake flowing up beside me. The key was in the ignition. The cart started up.
Then Arnie shouted, “Wait! Stop!”
It was weird to see those expressionless reptilian eyes, and hear his human voice.
“Something I’ve got to do.”
Arnie dropped from the cab and shot across the ground, to where a bunch of the uniformed orderlies were bending over something wrapped in netting. The men were too amazed to react. The thing under the net was the jungle cat. It was lying still, its eyes wide open, staring out of its endless, hopeless pain. Miranda had opened its cage, but it was still imprisoned. Arnie coiled himself and lashed out, smashing its tortured head with a single blow. The orderlies stood gaping. Arnie zoomed back to me.
“Sorry, but I had to do that. I could hear it, all this time. Had to set it free.”
“You were right.”
We went careering away, scattering deer, capybaras, piglets. Some of the orderlies spotted us and gave chase, shouting, but we were well ahead of them when we came out of the buildings onto the open ground. Now there was no cover between us and the tall perimeter fence. I didn’t know how I was going to get down that steep track, but we weren’t done for yet. I gripped the wheel of the little cart, gunning it as fast as it would go, but that wasn’t very fast. We seemed to be driving through treacle, moving incredibly slowly. I could see the gate. I was heading straight for it. On either side of me, I could see two of the big Jeeps converging. I realized that we weren’t going to make it. . . .
“Come on! Come on!” yelled Arnie.
The foremost Jeep swerved in front of me and thundered to a halt. Uniformed men poured out of it. I flung the wheel around . . . and there was
the other Jeep. I tried to put the cart in reverse, but I couldn’t find reverse. The cart jolted to a halt.
The electric motor whined and died. I covered my face with my hands.
“Well,” said Dr. Franklin, a little out of breath. “This has been exciting!”
I wanted to die. I uncovered my face, and saw more of Dr. Franklin’s men coming through the gate in the fence. They had Miranda in a net. Two of them were carrying her, several others were close on either side, prodding her with their rods. She was fighting, shrieking, striking out with her beak and talons as well as she could.
Dr. Skinner was with his boss. To give him credit, he looked pretty sickened.
When she saw that we’d been recaptured, Miranda went quiet.
One of the orderlies put the padlock back on the gate and locked it. Dr. Franklin took out a remote control, and pressed some buttons. He spoke to the men who were carrying Miranda, and they hurriedly moved away from the tall fence.
I could feel Arnie-the-snake beside me, calculating how many of them he could take out before they would gun him down.
“Arnie,” I called to him silently. “Don’t do it. You’ll make things worse.”
“How so?” said Arnie-the-snake. “What would be worse?”
“I’ve got an idea. We’ll go to the white place. You and me and Miranda. We can hide in our own minds, and he won’t be able to hurt us. It’ll be like being dead.”
But the white place had always been a tricky sort of illusion. It wouldn’t come. I couldn’t make the leap, and I couldn’t pull Miranda and Arnie along with me. I was too tired, too defeated. I couldn’t escape that way. I saw Dr. Franklin staring at me and Arnie. I saw his gaze moving over Miranda, who was lying in the net, the uniformed men ready to jab her if she moved. I could see his frustration. He had made us, but he didn’t know what was going on in our minds.
That was what frightened him. Not Miranda’s talons or Arnie’s massive strength. He’d created us, but he didn’t understand us, and for him that was unbearable. I was glad, bitterly glad, that we’d got to him. But I knew there’d be a horrible price to pay.
“Dr. Skinner,” he said, briskly. “I think we’ll remove the brain implants straight away. The radio-telepathy idea needs much more work, there’s no point in letting the trial continue. Miranda, since I gather you are with us again, in spirit, as it were, I’m afraid you are going to have to stay in that net until you are safely confined. Semi is looking very tired. I’m going to return you all to the ward, at once.”
Miranda shrieked.
Arnie’s voice in my mind muttered something like Semi, what about it?
I answered something like yes, and we charged. I’d run out of plans, I’d run out of ideas. We were not going back to that ward with the bars around the beds. We were not going to be vivisected. There was nothing, nothing else to do but go out in a blaze of glory. Arnie’s glittering muscular body shot into the bunch of orderlies around Miranda, like a battering ram. Three of them went down like ninepins. The rest scattered, yelling. I flung myself on the net, scrabbling to get it off her. The men in uniform didn’t know what to do. A couple of them got out their guns, real guns, and started waving them and shouting. They didn’t seem to have an idea what was going on, but they were still obeying orders, trying to get us back to the ward. Anyone who tried to grab me got slammed by Arnie’s tail. Dr. Franklin was shouting in Spanish. I don’t know what Skinner was doing. The orderlies had Arnie down, a whole bunch of them on his back; meanwhile I had freed Miranda. She shrieked at me, but I could see the human Miranda looking out of the bird-monster’s eyes, and I was happy.
She could have flown away then, only she wouldn’t leave us. There was blood on her wing feathers, but she wasn’t hurt badly. She launched herself into the air, and came screaming back, her great wings thundering. One of the uniformed men had my arms behind my back. I think he was trying not to hurt me, because I was a girl, not a weird animal, but he was struggling hard to get a jab at my neck or my arm with some kind of hypodermic. I was struggling and screaming. Miranda was beating at my attacker with her wings. Arnie had burst free from the men who’d been holding him down, and was coiling himself for a new attack . . . I heard Dr. Franklin shouting, “No! Don’t shoot to kill! Don’t damage them! I want them alive! I haven’t finished with them!”
He had the tranquilizer dart rifle. He was leveling it at Miranda—
The next things seemed to happen very slowly.
Arnie lunged at Dr. Franklin, slapped the rifle aside, and hit him a tremendous blow, right in his face. It lifted him off the ground. He sailed into the air like a rag doll, blood pouring from his nose. Miranda caught the rifle in her talons and yanked it away from him, swinging him around. Dr. Franklin went flying, twisting, his spine slamming against the mesh of the electrified fence—
Everyone stood still, paralyzed with shock. Dr. Franklin jerked a bit and then he was just hanging there, his neck all crooked, blood on his face, a smell of scorching coming from his clothes. I think I heard him muttering, “Excellent, well done, very resilient . . .”
But I expect I imagined that.
Dr. Skinner said, in a strange, flat voice, “Better switch off the juice and get him down.” The men looked at him blankly. He said it again, in Spanish (I suppose).
I’d collapsed in a heap on the ground. I was crying. Not for Dr. Franklin, no way. I was crying out of pure stress and exhaustion; and a dull sort of feeling that was the nearest I could come to incredible relief.
The men were all taken up with Dr. Franklin, getting him down, deciding he was really dead. They took no notice of us; the two weird animals and the sobbing girl.
About an hour later we were on the motor launch. Semi-the-former-fish in the cockpit, Miranda-the-bird perched on the rail, and Arnie-the-snake coiled up on the foredeck (taking up most of the space; it wasn’t a big boat). Dr. Skinner didn’t say much when he saw us off. He’d given us the instructions to go with Infusion Stage B, and made sure I knew how to use a hypodermic. But he hadn’t tried to argue with me when I’d said we didn’t want his help and we wanted to leave at once. He was in no state to argue with anyone. According to the charts, it was only about forty kilometers to the mainland, and I’m an island girl (at least in the summer holidays). I thought I could manage.
He said, “Good luck,” and he walked away.
We looked at each other in silence, two monsters and one human being in green hospital-type pajamas, with no hair and with gills in her neck. It seemed like a long, long way from the beach where we’d been prisoners in paradise.
“Let’s get out to sea first,” said Miranda’s voice in my mind.
I suppose the mental switches were being flipped, but we were so used to our radio telepathy that making contact could happen automatically, like walking into a dark room and reaching for the light switch. It was exactly like talking.
“Are you sure you can do this?” said Arnie worriedly.
“Drive a motorboat?” I said, scornfully. “Please. I’ve been in boats all my life. As long as we have enough fuel, and I think we do.”
So I cast off and started up the motor, and we set out, heading east.
When we were beyond the reef, I cut the engine.
I said, “We should check the supplies.”
Arnie-the-snake coiled himself up and muttered that he was feeling tired out. Miranda-the-bird and I opened lockers and peered into corners. We had charts. We had cans of extra petrol, a good supply of drinking water; we had biscuits and tinned food. Dr. Skinner had been prepared for a getaway before Dr. Franklin had interrupted his plans, and he’d made sure he had plenty of stuff. We would be okay. Miranda and I ripped out all the computer and radio equipment and chucked it over the side. That was reckless, but even though we’d seen Dr. Franklin dead, and Dr. Skinner had let us go, we weren’t taking any chances. We’d rather be lost at sea than back on that island.
When all this was done, we rejoined Arnie. Together we
went to the white place. I was half aware of the boat and the heading we were on, but I was with the others too, in that spooky white cloud.
“I could’ve got the ring off,” said Miranda. “I could have flown away. I didn’t dare. I was afraid he’d kill you, Semi. To hide the evidence, in case I managed to come back with the police.”
“Franklin was going to test you to destruction,” said Arnie. “He’d prepared the second-stage infusions, but he wasn’t really interested in changing us back. Not until he’d finished playing his games, anyway. He had me wired up, the way Semi saw. He had Miranda ringed, and Semi had the tag in her stomach that she didn’t know about. He wanted to see how you two stood up to isolation. He planned that you would both escape, or at least try to escape, and he’d observe what happened. He had the fantasy that you were like transgenic astronauts, surviving with no human contact on an alien planet, and if you both died or lost your minds, that would be okay. He was prepared to sacrifice one of you or both of you, as a step on the way to creating superhumans. He reckoned he’d be learning how to do better next time. He didn’t know he wasn’t going to be able to listen in on the radio link he’d given us. That was a setback, but he decided to carry on, using me as his control.
“He wanted you to believe I was still human, to make you feel more isolated. He said that if I told you I’d been changed, he would never change us back. I didn’t know how much he could tell from reading those brain-wave printouts. I didn’t dare to risk it. All I could do was tell you not to escape. And rely on Skinner.” Arnie shuddered. “You know, Franklin always talked to me as if I was human when I was changed. But I could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe it. I was just a thing.”
“In a way,” I said, “it was good that he decided to play those mind games. That was what broke Skinner. He was prepared to go along with the great work, otherwise, even when it meant torturing and nearly murdering three teenagers. He worshiped Franklin. In a horrible, horrible way, I can see why.”
“Dr. Franklin was an evil man,” said Miranda softly. “And he was crazy as a bedbug. But he was a genius.”
