Fifty Fifty

by S. L. Powell

  Gil tried to follow what he was saying but the scale of it was huge, too huge for him to get his head round.

  ‘What else do you want to see?’ said Dad.

  ‘Uh – where are the monkeys?’

  ‘There are no monkeys here,’ said Dad. ‘We don’t use them for genetic research.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ asked Dad after a while.

  Gil nodded.

  ‘Let’s go along to my office.’

  They went back through the mouse room, where Dad put the mice in their drawers, back through the rabbit room, back through the changing room where Gil had been blasted by the air shower. He took off his protective clothes and Dad led him out between the strips of the plastic curtain. They turned left down a corridor, and left again, and there was a door with a name plate saying Dr Matthew Walker. Gil stood looking up at it, and then he put his hand in his pocket and switched off the camera.

  Dad unlocked the door and ushered Gil in. The office had a proper window that you could look out of. Gil went across and looked through the smoked glass. Dad must really be quite important, he thought, if he had a room with a window in a building that had almost no windows at all. There wasn’t much to see, though, just more buildings made of cream-coloured stone and a slice of the road they had driven down past the museum, and a little patch of garden far below. Gil pressed his face against the glass to see if he could glimpse the animal rights protesters they’d driven past, and managed to bang his knee on a big metal box just under the window. ‘What’s this thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Fire escape,’ said Dad. ‘We can’t have a proper fire escape on this floor for security reasons. So all of us who work up here need to have a fire ladder next to the window, just in case we ever have to flee a burning building.’ He grinned. ‘Makes climbing out of your bedroom on to the conservatory roof look pretty tame, doesn’t it? It’s quite a long way down there.’

  Gil sat in an office chair while Dad took a can of Coke out of a tiny fridge. Dad didn’t really approve of Coke, and Gil couldn’t imagine him drinking it himself. He wondered if Dad had put it there specially as a reward for the end of their visit. Dad stood quietly leafing through papers while Gil sat and slurped, looking around the office. There was a huge photo above the desk, a cluster of spheres blown up thousands of times bigger than life size. At least now he knew what they were.

  ‘Is that one of your mice?’ Gil asked finally, pointing at the picture of the embryo.

  Dad was busy with something and took a while to reply.

  ‘It’s not a mouse at all,’ he said. ‘In fact, it’s a human being.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘Well, the embryos do look virtually identical. But I happen to know this one is human, that’s all.’

  Gil drained the last mouthful from the can, and then they made their way down through the building to the car park. Dad hadn’t quite got all the egg off the windscreen and it had dried like glue. He tutted in annoyance. The security guard was still patrolling the car park with his dog, and when they drove out on to the main road, Gil saw the animal rights protesters were still there. Dad turned the car smoothly away from them and soon they were out of sight.

  At home Mum opened the door, smiling expectantly. Gil noticed the way she exchanged looks with Dad, and how Dad nodded his head as a way of indicating to Mum that he thought it had gone well.

  ‘Well, you’ve had a long morning, both of you,’ Mum said. ‘You must be ready for lunch.’

  ‘I’ll just go and change,’ said Gil, running upstairs to his room.

  He stripped quickly to his underwear, ripping away the camera equipment and tossing it carelessly into his school bag. The carpet tape had stuck too tightly to his skin and it hurt when he pulled it off, but he didn’t care. He was utterly sick of his spying adventure. He had achieved almost nothing.

  The film was so dull he might as well wipe the memory card now. There was no blood, no pain, no torture, and apart from the nude mice he hadn’t seen a single thing that really upset him. There wasn’t even any point checking whether the camera had worked properly. Jude was going to be bitterly disappointed. It was nobody’s fault, but Gil felt as if he’d let him down big time.

  Gil’s punishments were lifted overnight without a word.

  On Sunday Gil found his Nintendo and MP3 player lying on his bed, together with five pounds’ pocket money and a big bar of chocolate. Dad disappeared off to work on Monday morning before Gil had even got up, so it was clear that he was allowed to make his own way to school once again. It meant he could go straight to Jude’s house with the buttonhole camera instead of having to be dropped off at school first, and Gil knew he should have been delighted, but he was too full of anxiety about the way Jude was going to react to the video.

  When Jude opened his front door, his face immediately broke into a huge grin.

  ‘Oh my God, you did it,’ he laughed. ‘You bloody did it.’

  Gil followed him down the narrow entrance hall to his room. Jude whooped with delight every step of the way.

  ‘Oh, man,’ he said, gasping for breath as he shut the door behind them. ‘I was so worried for you. I thought about you all damn weekend. It was the longest two days of my life.’ He stopped, and looked at Gil’s face.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked, suddenly serious. ‘Didn’t the camera work?’

  ‘Yes, I think so, but . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just – the film’s not very interesting. I think you’re going to be really disappointed.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jude’s face relaxed. ‘I doubt that very much. Let’s have a look.’

  Jude connected the buttonhole camera to the laptop on his desk and dragged up the armchair for Gil to sit in. Then he perched on his wobbly office chair, with a big pad of paper balanced on his knee, and handed Gil the recorder part of the camera.

  ‘OK, go,’ he said. ‘You play it back for me.’

  The video flickered on to the computer screen.

  Gil saw a blurred flash of the car park, filmed as he’d turned away from the car, followed by a shot of Dad unlocking the back entrance to the labs. The door swung towards the camera and there was sudden darkness. The lens readjusted inside the building in time to show the green lights blinking on the panel on the wall, and Gil could see Dad unlocking the next door, and then opening the door beyond that with his special pendant. The film swayed and jolted as the camera moved down the corridor and up the stairs. Gil was amazed at how much movement there was. How did his eyes ever cope with that amount of bouncing around? It made him dizzy.

  Jude was chuckling. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said. ‘If that’s all they can come up with, we’re laughing.’

  Gil opened his mouth to ask what he meant, but then Jude chuckled again as the camera staggered into the toilets, visited a cubicle and filmed Gil fiddling with buttons in the mirror.

  ‘Nervous, huh?’ he said, grinning sideways at Gil.

  The video bumped along to the laboratory room where Dad had shown Gil the mouse embryo. Gil was relieved to see that there were some better shots here and he made a real effort to stand still and aim the camera. He watched Dad run through his speeches again, listened to his voice coming quietly out of the computer, watched the way his eyes became wide and bright as he talked about life and DNA and bricks building themselves into houses. The voice on the video didn’t sound quite right. It was too thin. Dad’s real voice was like sweet-and-sour sauce, thick and punchy.

  A dreamy feeling came over Gil as he looked at the film he had made. It should have been exactly the same as the stuff he’d seen with his own eyes on Saturday, and yet it wasn’t. Somehow the viewpoint had shifted slightly, but he couldn’t work out how.

  ‘Bloody Frankenstein,’ Jude muttered.

  The camera started to follow Dad out of the embryo room, and Gil reached for the buttons on the recorder.

  ‘This bit’s really boring,’ he sai
d, beginning to fast-forward. ‘It’s just shots of stairs and corridors.’

  ‘Whoa, whoa,’ said Jude. ‘Go back a bit. Go back to that room.’

  Gil rewound, wondering what Jude was looking for. This time, instead of watching the video, he watched Jude. He was flicking between the computer screen and his pad of paper, scribbling fast. He’d already covered several pages.

  ‘This is good, this is good,’ said Jude as the video neared the entrance to the animal rooms. ‘This is where the animals are kept, yeah? Pause it a second. That’s perfect.’

  ‘What are you writing?’ asked Gil.

  ‘Eh? I’m not writing anything. I’m sketching a plan.’

  ‘What sort of plan?’

  ‘A plan of the inside of the building, of course.’

  ‘What for?’

  Jude turned his head very slowly and looked at Gil. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘why do you think I wanted this film?’

  ‘Um – to find out what’s going on in the labs. To put the video on a website, maybe, if it was any good. To put pressure on people like Dad so they’d have to close the labs down. I don’t know, really.’

  Gil rambled on, wondering whether he’d missed something vital, wondering why Jude wasn’t nodding in agreement. And then, just before Jude began to speak again, Gil suddenly knew what he was going to say. The words dropped around him like a shower of stinging fireworks.

  ‘We’re going in there, Gil. We’re going to liberate the animals. We’re going to show those bloody scientists that they can’t get away with this. It’s absolutely brilliant, what you’ve done. We didn’t know much about the back entrance to the labs and now you’ve shown us everything. The security is completely pants, just a few locks and a burglar alarm – pretty much all the internal doors are magnetic, and we can get through those easily. We weren’t completely sure where the animals were kept, either, and now we know the route through the building, which’ll save us so much time. You’ve done a great job.’

  ‘But you haven’t even seen the animals yet,’ said Gil, feeling dazed.

  ‘I don’t need to,’ said Jude, shrugging.

  ‘How could you possibly get past the guards and the dogs?’

  ‘That’s probably the easiest part to deal with. There’ll be more of us than there are of them, and you’d be amazed how a nice bit of steak can sort out even the scariest dog.’

  ‘Steak? I thought you were a vegan?’

  ‘Sometimes you have to make compromises, you know. For the greater good.’

  ‘But . . . but . . . I still don’t see how you’re going to manage the locks and the burglar alarm.’ Slow down, Gil wanted to say. This is going too fast.

  ‘I thought maybe you’d help us with that bit,’ said Jude quietly.

  ‘Me?’ Gil couldn’t look at Jude. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you know where your dad keeps his work keys and things like that?’

  Gil knew exactly where Dad kept his keys. They were in the box he’d found in the locked desk drawer in his study.

  ‘Yeah, I think so, but . . .’

  Gil had to stop and swallow hard. Now he was seriously frightened, even more frightened than the time he’d found Sally sprawled on the path and thought she was dead. Jude wanted him to steal Dad’s keys. He wanted Gil to burgle Dad’s study so that they could break into the labs. Why the hell hadn’t Gil seen this coming? All along he’d assumed that the video was the final goal, but it had turned out to be just the first step in a much bigger plan, and now Gil could see the whole picture it scared him to death.

  ‘It’s a big ask, I know,’ Jude said very gently. Gil tried to hide his face. He felt sure Jude could see exactly how he felt. ‘Maybe it’s too much. You’ve already put yourself on the line to get the video.’

  ‘No, no. It’s fine. Really.’

  ‘I’ll totally understand if you tell me you’ve got cold feet. We’ll find another way to do it, don’t worry.’

  ‘I haven’t got cold feet. I just didn’t realise what you wanted me to do, that’s all.’

  Oh for God’s sake, get a grip, Gil told himself furiously. He was supposed to be a hero. He desperately didn’t want Jude to start thinking he was a little scaredy-cat kid.

  ‘You know, if you tell me where the keys are we can come and get them ourselves,’ said Jude.

  ‘You mean – break in? Break into my house?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It wouldn’t be a problem, honestly. In fact, I’d make an educated guess and say your dad probably keeps everything in his study, doesn’t he? Which is on the ground floor, isn’t it, with a small window facing the front garden?’

  ‘You know my house? You know where I live?’ Gil’s words came out in an embarrassing squawk and Jude gave a smile that lit up half his face while his eyes remained cold and serious.

  ‘Yeah, we’ve had a few plans for your house. None of them have come off yet, though.’

  Plans for your house. The words lifted Gil up and swept him along in a flood of pure terror. Plans. For your house. Very clearly, he heard a voice speaking in his head. It was Dad, the time they’d come back from town on the bus. Let’s hope the house doesn’t get fire-bombed. He’s dangerous. And now Jude was telling Gil he’d been there, outside Dad’s study, examining the layout, making plans. Maybe he’d been in Gil’s back garden under the apple tree where the mice were buried. Maybe Gil had even looked out at Jude from his bedroom window without realising there was anyone there at all. It was like feeling hands grasp your shoulders when you thought you were all alone.

  But Dad can’t be right, Gil thought, struggling to control his panic. There was no way Jude could be that dangerous. He was a friend, wasn’t he? Jude was testing him, that was all. It wasn’t such a big deal. He just had to face up to the test and show Jude that he could pass it.

  ‘OK, I’ll get you the —’ Gil tried to say the word ‘keys’, but it wouldn’t come out. He tried again, and thought it was going to make him throw up.

  Jude nodded understandingly. ‘Sure?’ he said.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘We won’t need to keep them,’ said Jude. ‘We’ll just need to borrow them for a while so we can copy them, if that makes you feel any better.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s fine.’

  ‘You know, the animals would thank you for it,’ said Jude. ‘If they had a voice.’ He nodded at the computer screen, where Dad was still frozen in time with his head through the curtain. ‘Play.’

  Gil played the rest of the video.

  Jude watched in total silence and with a face as still as stone. It was impossible to read what he might be thinking. Gil gave up trying and instead looked again at the animals on the film – the rabbits in their cages, the mice in their boxes. He looked again at Dad. Dad the monster. Dad the torturer. Dad patiently coaxing the mouse out of its hiding place. Dad rubbing the mouse’s head with a finger, the way he stroked Mum’s hair sometimes.

  Who was Dad? wondered Gil. What was he?

  The camera back-tracked through the animal rooms, through the washroom, round the corners to Dad’s office. It glanced up at the sign that said Dr Matthew Walker. And then it stopped. The computer screen went grey.

  ‘That’s it?’ said Jude. He took a deep, shaky breath and rubbed his face with both hands as if he was washing himself. ‘Oh, God, it makes me so bloody angry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know how you coped with it.’

  ‘It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,’ Gil said, surprised at how upset Jude seemed to be. Then he wished he’d kept his mouth shut, because Jude blazed with anger.

  ‘Not bad? You call that not bad?’

  ‘It was just rabbits and mice,’ said Gil defensively. ‘There weren’t any monkeys or dogs or anything.’

  ‘And how do you know mice feel any less pain than monkeys? Or less pain than we do, come to that?’

  ‘Uh . . .’ said Gil uneasily.

  ‘Did you actually see any experiments? Apart from that pathetic rubbish with the swimming
mouse? Did you see what they do to the rabbits? Oh my God, those poor bloody creatures cooped up in cages, never allowed their freedom, poked and prodded and riddled with diseases and then just snuffed out when people like your dad have had enough of them. It makes me sick. He didn’t tell you how they kill most of the mice, did he? Well, I’ll tell you what they do. They hold the mouse down, stick a pencil across here —’ Jude chopped viciously at the back of his own head ‘– and then they pull the mouse’s tail until its neck snaps. You think that’s OK, do you? You think just because you didn’t see any blood that there’s no suffering going on?’

  ‘I didn’t . . . I don’t . . .’ Gil wriggled in his chair, trying to find something sensible to say. ‘I mean, those bald mice didn’t look so great. But Dad said they don’t know they’re ill.’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Jude’s eyes were furious. It was like being told off by Dad. ‘I get it. He gave you that rubbish about consciousness, didn’t he? It’s supposed to be only human beings who are aware of themselves. It’s only people who feel emotions, who care about each other.’ His voice was bitter.‘Well, how does he know? How does he know what it feels like to be a mouse? Those scientists are always crapping on about how much of our DNA we share with other animals. So if our genes are nearly the same, how can they possibly say that mice don’t experience any of the same feelings as we do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Gil. He was too bewildered to think any more. ‘I don’t know anything about this, Jude.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Jude, softening a little. ‘I’m sorry. You’re not the enemy. I don’t mean to lay into you. You know something?’

  He stopped, and Gil waited for him to go on.

  ‘If I was dying, and somebody told me that the life of just one of those animals would save me, I wouldn’t take it. You know that? I couldn’t live with the knowledge that my survival had been at the expense of another living creature. Not a single one of them, let alone the hundreds they’ve got in there. We’ve got to get them out, we really have.’