The Arm of the Starfish

by Madeleine L'engle

  Adam cleared his throat. “Dr. O’Keefe—Josh—”

  The men turned from the tank, which Adam could now see contained two lizards. The sunlight was caught and reflected in Dr. O’Keefe’s hair, in the brilliant blue of his eyes. Joshua might be able to slip, unnoticed, in and out of a crowd. Dr. O’Keefe would always stand out. Now he smiled at Adam, and his smile had much of the open warmth of Poly’s. Adam realized that up to this moment he had seen the older man only at night, only when his face had been pulled tight with anxiety.

  “Adam. Good to have you back with us.” He made no reference to the Avenida Palace, to Adam’s disobedience. “This afternoon I’ll show you the setup of some of our experiments, and how you can help me with correlating. Too near lunchtime now, and I’m hungry. Take him for a quick swim, Josh, while I clean up, and after we’ve eaten we’ll set to work.” It was a suggestion, but it was also an order.

  Joshua looked at him sharply. “Macrina?” he asked.

  Dr. O’Keefe gave a barely perceptible nod of assent.

  11

  “My bathing trunks are in my suitcase,” Adam said.

  “That’s all right,” Joshua told him. “There are plenty in the bathhouse. Come on.” He led the boy through the big room, into a smaller room, also lined with tanks, and then into a cement-floored room with several showers in stalls. A pile of bathing trunks lay on a wooden bench. Bottles of solution and extra lab equipment were stored in corners.

  “Help yourself,” Joshua told Adam, sorting through the bathing suits and coming up with zebra-striped trunks. “My favorites. Aren’t they repulsive?”

  Adam took a pair of plain navy trunks, disregarding several violent-looking outfits.

  Joshua laughed. “One of the native bath attendants at the hotel is a friend of the cook’s. Whenever someone leaves the island, forgetting his trunks—bathing suits, too, for that matter —he brings them over to us. It’s very handy.”

  They emerged from the dim coolness of the bathhouse onto a cement ramp leading to the sea wall, into a blast of sunlight. At the wall stood Poly, in a faded red woolen bathing suit which clashed with her hair.

  “Hi!” she called. “I thought maybe you’d take Adam for a swim before lunch and I didn’t want to miss out. What about …” she paused and looked questioningly at Joshua.

  Joshua nodded. “Your father said yes.”

  “Oh, good! May I call her?”

  Joshua sighed, looking troubled. “Of course. She comes better for you than for the rest of us.”

  —I have no right to ask questions, Adam thought. He jumped off the sea wall into the deep sand which burned against the soles of his feet so that he hurried, stumbling, across the beach to the damp, hard-packed sand cooled by the waves. Poly was already splashing through the shallow breakers; she threw herself down and started to swim, diving under the waves until she was beyond the pounding of the surf. Adam and Joshua followed. Adam had spent much of each summer in the water, but he had to swim almost to the extent of his energy to keep up.

  “Is this okay?” he called to Joshua as Poly continued to cleave her way swiftly and cleanly through the water, out toward the open sea.

  “Yes,” Joshua called back. “Poly’s not allowed to go out this far alone, but she’s a natural swimmer and this is as safe a section of beach as you’ll find anywhere. They’ve had trouble with sharks at the hotel, and with undertow, too.” He dove under the water, sending up a stream of bubbles.

  After a few more yards, Poly stopped, rolled over onto her back and floated for a moment, catching her breath, then started to tread water. She glanced back at Adam, as though about to say something, then seemed to change her mind. Looking out to sea she began to make a series of strange, breathy noises, which she repeated over and over again.

  “Look.” Joshua pointed out toward the horizon.

  Adam thought he saw a flash of silver, then another flash. Then there was the unmistakable joyous leap of a dolphin, coming in toward them.

  “Watch,” Joshua said.

  The dolphin came, leaping through the air, plunging into the water, leaping again, until it had almost reached them. Then it swam directly toward Poly, who swam to meet it with a glad cry. “Macrina!” She, too, seemed to leap out of the water, and then she was flinging her arms about the dolphin in the same way she had greeted Joshua and Adam, and the two of them were rolling over and over together, splashing, Poly shouting, the dolphin making a high-pitched whistle that was a greeting as radiant as Poly’s own.

  The dolphin started swimming in a slow, graceful circle, with Poly swimming beside her. “Show me your flipper,” she commanded.

  Obediently the dolphin rolled on its side, waving a sleek, wet flipper. It was a perfectly ordinary dolphin flipper, but Poly kissed it with exuberance, crying, “Oh, Macrina, darling, you’re wonderful!”

  For a moment Macrina seemed to nuzzle up to her. Then she leaped in a great shining arc and plunged under the water out of sight. It was evidently her goodbye because Poly turned away, back toward Adam and Joshua.

  “Does he know about Macrina?”

  “Not yet,” Joshua said.

  “I don’t know a thing that’s happened since Adam went to sleep in the Ritz,” Poly complained. “Every time daddy talked to you on the phone he went out to the lab and wouldn’t let me come in. He wouldn’t even let me talk to Father Tom.”

  “You’re a very inquisitive child,” Joshua said. “We’d better swim in now, Poly. You know your father doesn’t like to be kept waiting for lunch.”

  “But isn’t anybody going to tell me anything?” Poly wailed.

  “Adam’s done practically nothing but sleep,” Joshua said. “Come on, race you.”

  It was a close race, Joshua first, then Poly, last Adam. Poly grinned in satisfaction at beating him. “You swim very well, Adam,” she said condescendingly, standing on one leg in the shallow water, shaking her wet hair out of her eyes, then jumping up and down to get the water out of one ear.

  “That, my dear Miss Polyhymnia O’Keefe,” Joshua said, “is how to lose friends in one easy lesson. When you’re a few years older you’ll know better than to beat a young man in a race.”

  “Like Diana with the golden apples,” Poly said. “‘Come on, kids, I’m starved.”

  In the bathhouse they showered, sluicing off the salt, then dressed, still half-wet. Poly and Joshua were filled with such gaiety that Adam found himself relaxing, thinking,—If Dr. O’Keefe asks me about opening the door I’ll tell him.

  He could not feel, bathed in Poly’s and Joshua’s high spirits, that there could be any danger here.

  As they went in to the central section of the house Charles was standing in wait, calling, “Hurry,” and they went directly to the dining room. The dining table was round and the rest of the family was already seated, Johnny in a high chair, and Rosy nearby in a playpen. Mrs. O’Keefe called Joshua to sit at her right, and Adam was taken in hand by Poly who pulled him into the chair by her. Dr. O’Keefe said grace, and then Mrs. O’Keefe and Poly got up and served lunch, helped by a tall, lithe woman with straight black hair and dark skin. The meal consisted of an enormous tureen filled with tiny shellfish, still in their shells, bits of meat and sausage, and the broth in which it had all been cooked.

  “One of María’s specialties,” Mrs. O’Keefe said. “Peggy, how about getting us a couple more bowls to put our empty shells in?” She watched after the little girl, who went to the sideboard and brought two blue bowls to the table. “Joshua, when are you leaving?”

  “Low tide.”

  “About eleven tonight, then. So we can get in some singing before you go.”

  Joshua laughed. “If Adam can stay awake. I’ve never seen such a man for sleeping.”

  Poly defended Adam quickly. “But he was tired, Josh, he hadn’t had any sleep for three nights.”

  For a moment there was an uncomfortable silence. Then the phone rang. María looked inquiringly at Mrs. O’Keefe, who said,
“It’s all right, María, I’ll get it,” excused herself, and went into the living room, returning to say, “It’s for you, Adam.”

  “But—” Adam started in surprise, pushing back his chair.

  “It’s Carolyn Cutter,” Mrs. O’Keefe said.

  “Oh.” Adam stood up. “Excuse me.” He went into the living room and picked up the phone.

  “Adam,” came Kali’s light, high voice. “I’ve come to Gaea for a few days, and I’m at the hotel. Isn’t that splendid?”

  “Yes,” Adam said, politely.

  “Adam, you don’t sound glad to hear from me.”

  “Well, I am.” But he was not.

  “Are you where we can talk? I mean are you private or are you surrounded? If you’re surrounded just say yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. Your voice sounds all funny and closed in. Do you think you could escape and come over to the hotel for dinner tonight?”

  “I just got here,” Adam said, “so I wouldn’t think so.”

  “I was afraid of that. Don’t worry, Adam, it’ll be all right.”

  “What will?”

  “Everything. I do know it must be awful for you. Come tomorrow night, then. I’ll have daddy call and make it all proper and everything. We can’t talk now, so I’ll say goodbye.” Without waiting for him to reply she clicked off.

  Adam walked back to the dining room and sat down again, murmuring, “Excuse me.”

  “I don’t like that girl.” Poly offered him an orange from a bowl in the center of the table.

  Mrs. O’Keefe shook her head, warningly. “You don’t know her, Poly.”

  “I’ve met her at the Embassy when I’ve been there with Joshua. I don’t like her.”

  “Poly.” Her father looked at her sternly.

  “Oh, okay, I’m sorry, but I don’t. What did she want, Adam?”

  Mrs. O’Keefe said, “If she’d wanted to tell you, no doubt she’d have called you to the phone instead of Adam.”

  “She wanted me to come to the hotel for dinner tonight.”

  Poly wailed, “But you’re not going!”

  “Poly!” Dr. O’Keefe said.

  “No, of course I’m not, Poly. Not my first night here.”

  “Well, thank goodness. I’d have gone green with jealousy.”

  Dr. O’Keefe rose. “Ready to come to the lab, Adam?”

  “Yes, sir.” The boy excused himself to Mrs. O’Keefe and followed the doctor out.

  In the big lab Adam sniffed hungrily at the odor of fish and chemicals and burning gas in the Bunsens, for there was safety for him in this smell. It was home, it was comfort, and it was, for the moment, escape from confusion. In this familiar room the decisions he had to make would be about what went on in the tanks of starfish, and not choosing between spiders and teddy bears, or between two groups of people, both of whom seemed convinced that they spoke for the American Embassy and therefore for America.

  Dr. O’Keefe sat down at a large and ancient rolltop desk. The sunlight struck his hair, firing it. The eyes that looked at Adam were the clear and open blue of the sky. There was, in the smile, the warmth and welcome Adam had come to respond to and to love so quickly in Poly.

  Dr. O’Keefe looked around the lab, at the tanks of starfish, at the scarred working counter. “It’s a good lab,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot here. I’m sorry to be leaving.”

  “Because of the hotel?”

  Dr. O’Keefe leaned back in his creaking chair. “Yes. This will be our last summer here. It’s time to move on.” He took up a pipe and filled it slowly. “Sit down.”

  Adam perched on a rather wobbly stool and waited while Dr. O’Keefe lit his pipe, drawing on it thoughtfully, as though thinking what to say. In the tanks the water murmured and there was the occasional scrabbling sound of an animal moving around.

  “We came to the island,” Dr. O’Keefe said at last, “because it was, at the time, one of the few places left in the world where I could bring up my family and work undisturbed. We’ve almost finished what we came for. What we have to do now is to finish it quickly and get out in time.”

  “In time?”

  “When the resort hotel was built here about a year ago it wasn’t just because the world is running out of new playgrounds, and it wasn’t just one of Typhon Cutter’s business ventures—though, as usual, it’s been a successful one. It was largely—no false humility here—because of me. Everything I’ve done in this lab for the past months is now open knowledge.” Adam looked at him in a startled way, and Dr. O’Keefe explained. “Therefore everything that’s done in this lab is nothing that couldn’t have been done by any scientist anywhere in the world: China or Russia, for instance. The important part of my work is neither kept nor recorded here. All right, Adam, enough for now. Let’s start you on the tanks and what’s going on in them. Your job is to take care of the tanks and keep the daily reports.”

  Dr. O’Keefe pushed back his chair which gave a loud and protesting squeak. Adam followed him to the first tank in which were several perfectly normal-looking starfish. “Funny,” Dr. O’Keefe said. “Here we come from the same family tree and we know so little about these creatures. Presumably,” he gave a wry smile, “they know as little about us. Somewhere, a few billion years ago on the evolutionary scale, we chose to develop in different directions. I wonder why?”

  “Well,” Adam remembered unwillingly his interview with Typhon Cutter, “I suppose Darwin would say it was survival of the fittest and stuff. And mutations.”

  “Just happenstance?”

  “Well, in a way, sir. We developed the way we did because we began to use our forepaws as hands, and stood up on our hind legs.”

  “Just by accident?”

  “Well, I don’t know, sir. Dr. Didymus used to talk a lot about free will and making choices and stuff.”

  The doctor nodded, then pointed to the starfish in the tank. “Do you know how one goes about working with them?”

  “Well, it’s not easy, sir, because if a starfish feels that an arm is being hurt or threatened in any way he drops it and grows another. So if you want to work with starfish you have to put an anaesthetic solution in the water.”

  “Standard procedure, yes, and where we’ve made our first changes. Now, what happens to an isolated arm that drops off?”

  “It can’t regenerate. There always has to be a piece of central disc, or the starfish can’t regrow.”

  “So one wonders, doesn’t one, what is in the central disc that isn’t anyplace else? What would your idea be?”

  “Well, sir, Dr. Didymus says it’s been shown that nerve is very important in regeneration.”

  “Right. So what we have been doing is taking nerve rings from around the mouth of the animal and transplanting them to isolated arms.”

  “Wow!”

  “Not so spectacular. Not even a very new idea. But it works.”

  Adam looked not at the starfish in the tank but at Dr. O’Keefe’s face, his own face reflecting the doctor’s interest and excitement. “What happens?”

  “The arm produces its own central disc, and after about four months the familiar five-rayed form is back again. Look. The starfish here have all developed from arm fragments. Perfectly normal, ordinary starfish.”

  “Wow,” Adam said again.

  “They’ve been here a year and we’ll continue to observe them until we have to leave the island. You do see the implications of all this?”

  “Well, yes, sir. If it could be applied to people—”

  “Yes. But not too soon. The dangers are so horrifying they hardly bear thinking about. If unscrupulous men got hold of this it would be like letting loose the power of the atom for devastation, for death instead of life. The tiniest thing in the world is the heart of the atom, and yet it’s the most powerful. What we are learning from the starfish is just as powerful, and, like the core of the atom, can be either destructive or creative. Misused—it could be like dropping the bomb on
Hiroshima.” He moved on to the next tank. “Here we transplanted nerve rings about three months ago and you can see that regeneration is well on the way. In this tank we started two months ago but you can see that the starfish is going to grow, that life is going to win. Now here in the first tank you might think nothing is going to happen, but if you’ll look carefully you’ll see that regeneration has begun.”

  Adam stared eagerly into the tanks, his excitement at what Dr. O’Keefe was saying pushing the thought of Kali’s unwelcome phone call out of his mind. “Why hasn’t anybody done this before?” he asked.

  “I’m sure other scientists have. Now here in these tanks are frogs and lizards. It’s quite openly known that augmented nerve supply stimulates arms to grow on frogs and legs on lizards. The files are here, and I’ll show you the file not only for each tank, but for each animal, and it will be your job to keep these up to date daily.”

  “Yes, Dr. O’Keefe.”

  “This kind of work interests you, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. It excites me more than anything in the world.”

  “But the exciting things always have implications that we don’t foresee. Always, Adam.”

  “I wish they didn’t,” Adam said.

  “As Poly would remark, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Poly has the makings of a scientist, and she’s been working with me on this all along. As a matter of fact, I have to keep her out of the laboratory. It’s better right now for Poly to help my wife than to work with me here, so I seldom allow her out here until after the younger ones are in bed.”

  “Is that why she was kidnapped?” Adam asked.

  “Because she knows what I’m doing? Yes. But also I think the idea was to use her as a hostage. Then, when you opened that door at the Avenida Palace something new came into the picture. You became more important than Poly. At least this is my guess.” He looked at Adam, but Adam looked down at his feet. Dr. O’Keefe sighed.

  Adam, still looking down, mumbled, “But you said that none of this was really secret.”