Being Arcadia

by Simon Chesterman

  I can almost feel the gold medal in my hand when it starts to soften, Alfred Nobel’s face in profile morphing into Edith’s pale visage in a hospital bed. A sprig of jasmine stands limply in a vase beside her. I take a cloth to mop her brow as she pushes on through the pain. You are strong, I tell her. You are stronger than this, I lie. We will make vessels for ourselves, I will her to believe. She fights the illness; she fights me. But it is too soon, she is taken from me too quickly. I am at her grave, weeping openly without caring who sees. Beside me, Louisa and Ignatius coo over their new child, the child who killed my Edith. The tombstone marks the last resting place of her body, rotting away before I was able to salvage her mind. I toss the wilted jasmine onto the granite slab and turn away.

  Once more the image shifts, the engraving on the stone becoming pixels on a computer screen, a graph charting the mental activity of a rhesus monkey in a distant laboratory. Through selective breeding and training—nature and nurture—my macaques are now smarter than chimpanzees. The University was wrong to shut down my programme. Beside me in the Senior Common Room, Charles Milton is nodding and looking expectantly at Lysander, our most promising doctoral student. I have seen that fire in his eyes before—each time I look in the mirror—and I know he is with us also. There is a knock at the door: a young woman, an undergraduate, who wishes to know if she may join our discussion. I recognise her from my tutorials; she is one of the few who demonstrate any real creativity. I am about to invite her in when I notice what is standing behind her in the corridor.

  Head bowed, weight shifting awkwardly from one hoof to another, it is unclear how the beast came to be in the narrow passageway. Gently easing its way past the student, it now enters the Senior Common Room and proceeds towards a tray of biscuits laid out for the fellows. With delicate movements of its leathery tongue, the camel consumes them all before letting out a loud belch of satisfaction.

  Now it is the belch that is replaced by the hiss of an espresso machine. I carry the two ristrettos, foamy crema atop an intense mouthful of coffee, across my office to where the undergraduate sits, two years older and blossoming into womanhood. I need your help, I am going to tell her. I can’t carry on this experiment without you. Together we will revolutionise education, I will tell her—which is partly true. But first I need to know why there is a camel in my office standing behind her.

  The animal raises its head to look at me directly with its dark eyes, triple-eyelids blinking slowly. With a snort it shakes its head, globules of saliva flying from full lips. And then it says—it says?—“Switch camels.”

  Switch camels. Don’t wait to be last, switch camels and race ahead to be first. “Come, Arcadia,” the camel continues. “Put yourself in the position of the person you are trying to understand. Climb into his skin and walk around in it, just like Mother taught us.”

  The walls dissolve and rematerialize. I am still sitting in my office, but the undergraduate and the camel have gone. I feel older now, wearier. And groggy. I have been drugged. A message instructs me to telephone a Miss Arcadia, who agrees to come and help me. When she enters I must feign ignorance, innocence. I must play the helpless old professor—which is what I am, of course. When she enters—

  Switch camels.

  When I enter, the old man has a bomb strapped to his chest. He offers to phone the fire department, but a burst of music indicates that the timer has activated, startling the camel that stands behind him. I set to unscrewing the panel, even as the walls of the office start to fade and are replaced by a mock hotel room.

  From the elevated walkway, I watch as Arcadia and her young friend work their way through the puzzles—From the ground I work through the puzzles while Dr. Bell observes from an elevated walkway. The only sounds to disturb the silence are his leather-soled shoes on the metal and the camel chewing its cud, before a man’s voice echoes through the room screaming in frustration: “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Then this image, too, is wrenched away and replaced by—

  Black.

  Silence. Is this death? Curious. Unlikely that she would feel so unchanged. A breath. Or that she would be breathing—and that the air would smell of monkey faeces.

  Then the shrieking begins. A dozen macaques, banging on their cages—now unlocked because power to the laboratory has been cut. Doors swing open and she can hear their movement through the room, calling to one another in triumph at their escape. Her own body is unresponsive, the muscle relaxant blocking the signals from her brain.

  There is activity beside her now. Dr. Bell? With great effort she feels her index finger begin to move. She starts the process of making a fist, but boxing requires coordinated muscles to put all her weight into a punch. She needs more time.

  Hands lift the helmet from her head, removing the electrodes quickly but gently. Is Dr. Bell resetting the experiment? She shifts her head to slow him down.

  “Stay still, Arcadia, we don’t have much time.” A familiar voice. The undergraduate student from her vision, much older now.

  “Miss Alderman?” she says weakly.

  Two pairs of hands lift her from the chair, helping her stand. A lock of hair brushes across her cheek. Miss Alderman and… “Henry?”

  Her eyes become accustomed to the darkness and she sees their outlines. “How did you find me? He smashed my phone.”

  “Lucky for you,” Henry whispers, “I don’t trust you. I tracked your phone from the moment you left me. When I saw you had gone to Chapel, I went down to see what you were up to.”

  “Stalker,” she says softly.

  “I got there just in time to see Bell putting you in the back of a van. I ran after it and was about to wake Mr. McMurdo to call the police when Miss Alderman arrives and tells me to get in. We lost you a couple of times and searched these factories until we found the van.”

  “Watch out for Dr. Bell,” she begins, “he has a—”

  “A gun?” The room is suddenly bathed in light as the power returns. Most of the macaques have left their cages and are now perched atop them. There is no sign of Moira, but at the end of the corridor, outside the control room, Dr. Bell stands with her twin’s revolver trained on them. The helmet is removed, but a stray electrode remains taped to his brow, cord dangling above the plaster on his cheek.

  One of the macaques screams and leaps towards him. The sound of the weapon discharging is deafening, the impact of the bullet stopping the monkey in mid-air. It crumples to the ground, whimpering. The others, including her white-tufted cellmate, look on in horror.

  Gun pointed at them once more, Dr. Bell calmly opens a trapdoor in the floor. The sound of rushing water becomes louder—the river must pass directly beneath the laboratory. With his foot he pushes the injured primate through the trapdoor and into the water.

  “Any other heroes?” he says, to both humans and monkeys.

  “It’s over, Joseph,” Miss Alderman says. “This perversion, this abomination ends today.”

  “Ah Phaedra, how very disappointing.” He tuts. “I had such high hopes for you.”

  “Don’t call me that,” the teacher rebukes him. “You used me the way you used everyone else. You lied to me.”

  “The undergraduate with the ristretto,” Arcadia says slowly, stretching to retrieve a memory that is not her own. “He told you that he wanted to revolutionise education, but he needed your help. He needed your body to—to bear his child.”

  “You told her?” Miss Alderman’s voice chokes with emotion. “Arcadia, I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you so much, but I didn’t know how.”

  “Much as I am enjoying this little family reunion,” Dr. Bell says, “Arcadia and I have some unfinished business. Your little trick with the camel was quite entertaining, though I think this time we’ll go with a complete wipe before emulation. It does mean some additional time relearning basic motor skills, but swings and roundabouts as they say.”

  Where is Moira? Her cage door stands open. Did the other her put on running shoes and flee the grizzly after
all?

  Her arm across his shoulders, she feels Henry straighten. “Over our dead bodies,” he says bravely.

  Dr. Bell cocks the revolver. “Yes, well, that was rather what I had in mind.”

  “Over her dead body too, I guess,” she says, looking over Dr. Bell’s shoulder.

  “I beg your pardon?” he pauses with a cold laugh. “You want me to turn and look behind me, as if this were some kind of pantomime? I’m afraid you really don’t know Moira at all. From birth she demonstrated a fierce survival instinct. Her immense intellect puts her own preservation first and foremost. Given a chance to escape, she would seize it and damn the rest of you. Trust me, she’s long gone.” He points the gun at Miss Alderman’s chest.

  “Sorry to disappoint you again, Daddy,” Moira says, swinging a metal pipe at the back of Dr. Bell’s head. The gun fires but his aim is off and the bullet smashes a fluorescent tube in the ceiling. The thud of the bar hitting his skull was loud; yet as fragments of broken glass fall Moira is staggering also, struggling to lift the improvised weapon a second time.

  Dr. Bell doubles over but recovers before Moira, who slumps to the ground. “A wise precaution putting muscle relaxant in your coffee also, eh Moira? You’re forgetting your Emerson: ‘When you strike at a king, you must kill him.’” He steps past her and turns to face all his captives. “Just look at you both—my two daughters, all talk and no action. Now, where were we? Oh yes, over your dead bodies.”

  “There’s no way out,” Miss Alderman says. “Do you think we would have come in here without calling the police first?”

  Henry looks at the teacher, confused but with a glimmer of hope.

  “That’s exactly what I think,” Dr. Bell replies coolly. “With a record like yours, you plan on being long clear before the police arrive.”

  Miss Alderman does not blink, but Arcadia sees from Henry’s face that it is true. He had suggested calling the authorities, but was talked out of it.

  “So it’s just as well that I did,” Moira says from the ground.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Before I went into the chapel last night,” the other her continues. “I attached one of Magnus’s tracking devices to your van and sent him a text message to come and find us both at 7am.”

  Arcadia shakes her head, incredulous. “You knew Bell was there? You knew he was going to drug you?”

  “And drug you also, and capture us both. Of course. It was the logical way of getting him to expose his plan and bring it all crashing down around him.”

  “You’re bluffing,” Dr. Bell says. “Even you could not have predicted all that.”

  Moira sighs. “I could agree with you, I suppose. But then we’d both be wrong.”

  Dr. Bell’s eyes widen and he sneaks a look at his watch. “Most impressive. What a shame that your dear brother will arrive to find that Arcadia—that is, I—am the only survivor of a gun battle with a tragic end.”

  He raises the weapon a final time.

  11

  REQUIEM

  “Jasmine,” she says weakly.

  “What did you say?” The barrel of the revolver still points at Miss Alderman, but Dr. Bell’s attention shifts back to her.

  “Jasmine,” Arcadia repeats. “It was Edith’s favourite flower. One of your strongest memories is being surrounded by them in the forests of Thailand. You were hunting rhesus macaques, like these ones.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with anyth—”

  “You loved her,” she continues. “And she loved you, that much is clear. But something happened to you. Her death changed you. You blamed Magnus; you blamed biology itself.”

  “Spare me the armchair psychoanalysis,” he says. Yet the barrel wavers.

  “It’s not psychoanalysis—it’s your own memories. I’ve been inside your head, Dr. Bell. I know things about you that you won’t even admit to yourself.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know that you fought with her before she died.”

  His mouth opens to speak, but there are no words.

  She reaches back, digging for memories that are not her own. “‘You are strong,’ you told her. ‘You are stronger than this.’ But you knew she was not. You knew she was going to die and tried to keep it from her. You tried to convince her that she could live forever and she fought you, tried to persuade you that she wouldn’t want to anyway.”

  She digs further, trying to find the words. “‘We live and we die, Joseph.’” Her voice has become deeper, older. “‘That’s what life is. It’s true that sometimes, in nature, there are cells that refuse to die; that go on and on, fighting against death. There’s a term for this. It’s called cancer. You have to let me go, Joseph. You have to let this fight go.’”

  The gun is shaking now. “Stop it,” he whispers, pressing the heel of his other hand to his forehead. Then more loudly: “Stop it, stop it! Get out of my damned head.”

  Atop the cages, the white-tufted macaque is edging carefully closer to Dr. Bell. It looks her in the eye and nods silently, teeth bared in a grin. Keep him distracted.

  “Death is what gives life meaning, Dr. Bell,” she uses her own words now. “It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. If it went on forever, what reason would there be to do anything?”

  “’Had we but world enough and time,’” Moira adds from the floor, “‘this coyness, lady, were no crime.’”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Dr. Bell straightens. “For all the intelligence that I gave you, you still have the arrogant ignorance of teenagers.”

  The macaque pauses, directly above Dr. Bell’s shoulder, rocking its head from side to side. Estimating the distance?

  “You gave us nothing of value,” she replies evenly, willing her muscles to overcome the drugs, putting more weight on her own legs. “Yes, we share some DNA. Yes, you put Moira and me into our petri dishes. But it’s you who are wrong about human nature and you know nothing of nurture. When someone dies, it isn’t their mind that we miss, that we wish we could preserve. It’s our relationship with them, our connection to them. That’s what you took when you set in motion the events that took my own, my real parents.”

  “Science sometimes requires sacrifice,” he says, raising the gun once more. “As it does today.”

  She looks up at the macaque, which sees its chance. With a banshee wail it flings itself towards Dr. Bell’s outstretched arm, fingers wrapping around his wrist as its teeth sink into the back of his hand. He yells in pain, dropping the gun, which clatters onto the ground between Moira and the open trapdoor. Enraged, Bell hits his arm against the nearest cage but the white-tufted monkey jumps clear, now grinning through teeth red with blood.

  On the floor, Moira forces herself into movement, defying the muscle relaxant through sheer willpower and sliding her body towards the revolver, arm extended. Bell sees this and dives for it himself. They reach the gun at the same time. Moira and Bell tussle over the weapon; Arcadia strives to move, legs straightening as sensation returns to them; beside her, Miss Alderman is moving forward to intervene—when the gun fires. The macaques freeze at the sound and Moira sits up, a surprised expression on her face.

  “Well,” the other her says. “I did not see that coming.” On the ground beside her, Bell groans and rolls over onto his back.

  There is a moment of hope, but it is Bell whose hand now holds the revolver. Another look at Moira confirms that a dark patch on her shirt is spreading, lifeblood seeping out from a bullet wound.

  A trickle of red escapes Moira’s lips, drawing a jagged line down to her chin. Her face is pale as her body starts to tip forward towards the open trapdoor and the rushing water beneath.

  “Moira!” she cries, but her limbs remain sluggish; she succeeds only in breaking free of Henry and Miss Alderman’s grasp to kneel on the floor. She throws herself forward to land on her chest, arms reaching across the trapdoor just as Moira tumbles through it.

  She grasps Moira’s
hands, bracing her feet against the base of the cages to counter her sister’s weight. The other her’s legs dangle over the water. It is the first time she has held her sister, but her muscles are too weak and the body, her own body, is too heavy.

  “Help me!” she calls, but Henry is in shock and Miss Alderman is standing over Bell, a sharp kick sending the gun across the room.

  Moira looks up at her and their eyes lock. “I’m sorry, sis,” the other her says through a mouth now filling with fluid.

  “What for?” she replies through watering eyes. “You saved me, you saved us all.”

  “I’m sorry,” Moira repeats, “that your life is going to be so boring from now on. Without me.”

  She laughs and chokes back a tear. “Let’s not write you off just yet. It’s just a flesh wound, right?”

  The other her smiles. “All right, we’ll call it a draw.” A cough brings up more blood. “But I’m afraid this one hit my liver. I’ve got a couple of minutes before I bleed out.”

  She feels her own legs slip as her foot comes loose from the cage. Then Henry’s arms wrap around her, holding her fast.

  “He’s a keeper, that one,” Moira says.

  “Don’t leave me, Moira.” She fights to hold on but her grip is loosening.

  “You’ll be fine,” the other her hushes. “But do me one favour? Ask me if I have any last words, ask if I want to turn to Jesus and renounce Satan?”

  Moira slips another inch closer to the water.

  “Do you have any last words?” she sobs. “Do you want to renounce Satan?”

  The other her smiles through the blood and the pain. “This is not the time,” Moira says, “to be making new enemies.”

  Her sister’s eyes close and she feels her grip slacken. She cannot bear the weight alone and the last thing she feels is Moira’s fingers brushing against her own as the body of her twin drops into the muddy torrent below.

  The rest is a blur. Henry’s arms are around her shoulders and she is dimly aware of him speaking, then calling to Miss Alderman. Together, they lift her from the trapdoor and close it.