Not Dark Yet

by Berit Ellingsen

  “Please put this on,” Kaye said, handing him a green coverall and plastic shoe covers from the box.

  He hung his short wool coat up and pulled the laboratory garment on. It was thin and crinkly and resembled paper, with the legs and sleeves ending in elastic bands.

  The assistant professor removed his own brown fleece sweater, revealing a white t-shirt and a surprisingly solid physique underneath, and pulled on a coverall too. Kaye then took out a metallic red climber’s carabiner bristling with keys of various sizes, picked one, and unlocked the next door.

  The room inside was also long and narrow, with a worktop running the length of one wall. The white surface featured two steel sinks with large, curving faucets, the lens of a motion sensor beneath each steel neck, bottles of liquid soap and disinfectant next to them. Along the worktop were boxes of latex-free lab gloves in four sizes, a white plastic wash bottle labeled “twenty percent ethanol,” and a glazed ceramic jar holding pens and markers of various thickness and colors, boxcutters, and a laser pointer. There was also a shallow plastic box containing hammers, tongs, an awl, scalpel handles, and a set of screwdrivers in various sizes. The shelves above the worktop had no doors and displayed stacks of plastic bowls and boxes, graded glass beakers, measuring cylinders, pipettes, square plastic bottles labeled “sodium chloride,” “potassium chloride,” and other salts, more hand disinfectant, and several brown glass bottles containing medical-grade ninety-eight percent ethanol. Beneath the worktop were rows of drawers and cabinet doors, as well as large bags of food pellets and wood wool, stacks of paper towels, and plastic buckets.

  On the opposite wall were four rows of transparent plastic boxes lined with wood wool, a tube of liquid attached to each box. The scratched plastic dampened the brightness of the fluorescent light to a golden glow. Inside each softly illumined world small furry backs were curled up in the wood wool. The mice seemed to be asleep; no tiny mammal was jumping or running inside the plastic containers. Kaye didn’t comment on the mice, but continued to the next door, where a large round shower head had been mounted on the wall. A triangular handle with an emergency sign dangled in a thin chain from the shower head. Beneath it, at chest height, was a circular steel bowl with a small tap and two rubber cups protruding from the bottom. The emergency shower and eye rinsing system was dusty and unused. Next to it was a plastic rack with first aid equipment behind a transparent lid.

  In the room that followed the air was noticeably warmer, more humid, and smelled of pine trees and bird droppings. The space resembled most of all a dog pound, with tall cages of plastic-encased wire, stacked two on top of each other, in a row along the wall. Inside each enclosure perched an owl, as tall as the length of his lower arm, or larger. Some of the birds were white with dark speckles, others had a tan or gray base coloration overlaid with black or brown. A few of the owls turned their heads almost one hundred and eighty degrees to inspect their visitors with large, docile eyes, and blinked at them slowly, like cats, before they swiveled their heads back and ignored them. Others only shuddered and fluffed themselves a little, and shifted calmly on their perches.

  Kaye grinned at him.

  He smiled and approached the nearest cage.

  “Magnificent, aren’t they?” Kaye beamed.

  He nodded and peered into one wire-bounded space, trying to meet the owl’s gaze, but the large bird only winked a few times, closed its eyes, and remained still. “Are they all the same species?” he asked.

  “No,” Kaye said. “We have ten different species, because each navigates by auditory clues a little differently. Our aim is to study the full range of hunting techniques and neural wiring among owls, which is why we keep more than one species.”

  “Local ones?”

  “From all over the world, but raised in captivity. Their wild cousins should be allowed to remain wild. These were saved from an aviary that had to close. They were born in captivity and couldn’t be released without extensive training and care.”

  “What happened?” he said. “Lack of visitors?”

  “A fire, a rather sudden one,” Kaye said. “The park had a history of mistreating their birds. But the owls are happy now, that’s what matters.”

  “Of course,” he said.

  Kaye continued to describe the owls, how the various species and their hearing differed and what significance that had for what type of prey they took and their rate of success.

  He turned toward the other cages. “All I know about owls is that they’re nocturnal.”

  “They’re mostly active at night,” Kaye said. “Or when they perceive it’s night, and that’s when they usually hunt. But one or two species do hunt during the day if they need to, and they all do if the situation presents itself.”

  By the door to the next room hung a calendar with handwritten notes in red, blue, green, and black. The assistant professor leaned close to inspect it. “The owls have been outside today, but not fed their evening meal yet,” Kaye said, “so I can show you that.”

  “Do you need me to do anything?” he said.

  “Just watch. Think of it as introducing yourself, your voice and motions.”

  “Can they tell the difference between us?”

  “Of course,” Kaye said. “They are able to hear a mouse running through the underbrush in complete darkness with such accuracy that all they need to do is fly over and scoop it up with their talons.”

  “Soundlessly?” he said.

  “Completely silent to us because of how their wings and tail are constructed,” Kaye said. “They have to, since their prey is not only running, but also listening for its life.”

  “Amazing,” he said.

  “Isn’t it?” Kaye said and gave him a broad smile.

  The assistant professor returned to the room they just left. There he pulled out two laboratory gloves from a box and put them on. Then he took one of the mouse cages down from the rack and placed it on the counter. Inside the plastic several lumps of brown fur were visible in the wood wool.

  Can’t just feed one of the owls,” Kaye said, “or the rest of them won’t calm down for hours.”

  “Do they become envious of each other?” he asked.

  “Who knows,” Kaye said. “At least they can tell when someone else is getting something they don’t and they dislike it. And why shouldn’t they be capable of feeling envy, even if they are birds? They’re intelligent enough to thaw food that’s frozen over with the heat from their own bodies. Many animals seem to experience the same emotions as we do, joy, fear, anger, desire, and so on. Some even mourn their dead when they encounter a corpse of their own species.”

  “Really? I had no idea.”

  The assistant professor searched his face for a moment. “Sorry, I’m lecturing,” Kaye said. “It’s a bad habit, but almost unavoidable in academia.”

  “No, please go on.”

  “It seems that most, if not all, of our emotional responses are older than humanity,” Kaye continued, a look of child-like eagerness on his face. “Much of what we think makes us human actually pre-dates us, our tools, and our civilization. We inherited love and altruism from our evolutionary forebears, those traits did not originate in human beings.

  “Humanity is eradicating the habitats of millions of species, with several hundred going extinct each day. We’ve set off a new mass extinction, on a scale that’s only happened five times before on the planet. Our hunger for non-renewable energy, cheap consumer goods, and endless economic growth is making the same impact on the environment as an asteroid would. Even worse, the large earth systems may be so destabilized that several aspects of climate change are now irreversible. It’s impossible to say which wild animals or plants will survive under these conditions.”

  He looked at the assistant professor, not certain how to respond.

  “Well, that concludes tonight’s class,” Kaye smiled. “Shall we get to work?”

  Kaye carried the box of mice into the owl room and continued to the uppe
rmost cage in the corner furthest from the door. The mottled gray bird that sat inside turned its head toward them and blinked, but did not otherwise move or make a sound. The assistant professor pushed one hand beneath the plastic lid of the mouse box and picked up one of the round forms that was sleeping inside the scuffed world. The mouse stirred only a little. With the other hand, Kaye slid the small latch of the owl cage aside, opened the door, and placed the mouse inside. In the new and unfamiliar environment the mouse kept to the walls of the enclosure and nearly vanished in the deep wood wool. The owl stretched its neck and moved its head from side to side. Then the bird hopped down almost nonchalantly and landed right on top of the mouse. The tiny mammal squeaked more loudly than its size indicated it was capable of and began to struggle intensely, but that could not save it from the owl’s talons. The owl picked the mouse up with its beak and flapped back to the perch. There it tilted its head, snapped its mandibles a few times to orient the prey, stretched its neck, and devoured the mouse whole. The owl swallowed a few more times, shook its feathers, then closed its large yellow eyes. The other birds were hooting, turning their heads, and beating their wings so feathers and wood wool swirled inside the cages.

  “Don’t worry,” Kaye said. “We do have a special permit to feed the owls live mice.”

  He nodded. He had seen worse, of course he had, but he couldn’t tell that to a stranger.

  “I’d better finish this before all of them start shouting,” Kaye said. The assistant professor continued to the next enclosure, dipped his hand into the mouse box, opened the latch, dropped a mouse inside, shut the wire door, then progressed to the next owl. As the birds spotted the mice, they fell silent, and chased and ate their prey.

  “They don’t receive the food for free though,” Kaye said after he had fetched a second box of mice and fed all the owls. The assistant professor crossed the bird room and opened the door in the back. “This is where they earn their meals.”

  The room inside was square, about five by five meters, and lit by small, strong spotlights. The walls as well as the ceiling were paneled in a blue plastic material that was smooth and soft to the touch. The floor was covered with the same wood wool as the mouse boxes and owl cages. On the other side of the room was a rectangular mirror and a narrow door. In the center of the blue space stood an emaciated and nearly leafless birch tree. Gray and yellow droppings streaked the few branches that the tree possessed.

  That’s the problem with birds, he thought. They shit everywhere, even where they sleep.

  Along the floor triangular sheets of green paper with white marker at the summits had been taped on the plastic surface. A few paper trees had also been glued to the walls to further mimic a place in the mountains, without making the illusion any more convincing. Instead, it looked like a rubber room for owls.

  “We’ve tried to make it a little more homey for the birds,” Kaye said, as if guessing his reaction. “But we haven’t got much leeway because of the soundproofing and the microphone setup.”

  He nodded.

  The assistant professor strode across the wood wool and unlocked the narrow door in the back. When he switched on the light inside, the mirror became a window. The small space was filled with two blond desks set at a right angle from each other, bounding a cluster of office chairs. The desks carried monitors, computer keyboards, and sound recording consoles, reminding him of the music studio Beanie worked at in the city center.

  “This is where we measure the owls’ hearing during the sound experiments,” Kaye said.

  He nodded at Kaye through the window.

  “Listen to this,” Kaye said. The assistant professor pressed one of the keyboards and a note played in the blue room. It sounded like the dull, amelodic tone of a hearing test. The silence that followed was thick and muted, nothing like the spacious, open quiet of the mountains. There was another note, longer and more high-pitched this time. Kaye pointed into the soundproofed room.

  He turned to find out where the tone was coming from, somewhere in the corner to the left of the door. He went over to it and looked back at Kaye.

  Kaye nodded and smiled, then played another sound, a deep one, which hummed right at the edge of his hearing.

  He moved to the wall that emitted the tone.

  The assistant professor grinned at him through the one-way mirror. “You’re a good owl.”

  He smiled back.

  “What do you think?” Kaye said, standing in the doorway. “Is the room too small for photographing the birds?”

  He shook his head. “Should fit perfectly for a camera on a tripod,” he said.

  “Excellent!” Kaye said. “Then we’re all set. Can we start tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Yes,” he said. “When?”

  “Six,” Kaye said. “Unless that’s too late for you?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “I’ll meet you at the door downstairs,” Kaye said. “The foyer should be open until eight. If it’s locked, just phone me.”

  He nodded.

  The assistant professor went back to the recording room. “It’s rather late. Do you need a ride home?” Kaye said while switching the monitors and the lights off.

  “Thanks, that would be nice,” he said.

  They exited the soundproof space and returned to the cloakroom.

  “If you wish to be absolutely certain of not bringing any mouse allergens home, take a shower and wash your hair once you get there,” Kaye said, peeling the green coverall off and putting on the brown fleece sweater again.

  He nodded. “I’ll probably go swimming.”

  “In the sea, at this hour?”

  “No, there’s a pool in the building.”

  “Really?” Kaye said. “And it’s actually being used?”

  “Mostly by me,” he said. “I rarely see anyone else there.”

  “What a luxury,” Kaye said.

  He nodded.

  They both exited, the door sighed shut and the lock whirred into place. The ventilation hummed. The hallway was dark, lit only by the green shine from an emergency sign at the end. When Kaye started down the corridor, the ceiling lamps flickered to life.

  “Not many people up here,” he said.

  “No, not at this time in the evening,” Kaye said. “Probably only a graduate student or two, doing overnight experiments.”

  They continued down to the fifth floor hallway and caught the elevator to the first floor. In the small mirrored space he leaned against the wall and avoided Kaye’s eyes, listening instead to the whirring of the elevator as it moved through the shaft until it slowed, bounced, and the worn doors rattled open. The foyer of The Institute for Biological Sciences was empty. The rectangular, rust-colored tiles on the floor dulled the light from the fluorescent lamps in the lowered ceiling that stretched from the elevators to the front door of the building. The rear wall faced an overgrown park and consisted of glass set in enormous rectangular wooden frames. In the space between the concrete front and side walls, and the glass-and-wood back, several suspended ramps rose toward the second and third floors. The panorama wall and ramps made the foyer look grand, but with the night pressing against the glass the space seemed dark despite the plentiful illumination. Their footfalls on the tiles were hushed and dry. The foyer was so beautiful he hoped he would never have to see it in full daylight.

  Outside it was humid and foggy, on the verge of drizzle.

  “My car’s right over there,” Kaye said and nodded at a modest vehicle further down the street. Except for the campus structures at the end, the thoroughfare was dominated by old yet well-kept tenement buildings which boasted elaborate casement windows, verandas with carved banisters, and tall finials at the gables. Kaye’s car was cramped and old and smelled of gasoline and rain gear. The dashboard held a compact disc player and several unlabeled discs cluttered the small compartment beneath it. In the back seat unidentifiable clothing and a plastic bag lay rumpled.

  “Please excuse the mess,” Kaye
said, got in on the driver’s side, and pulled the seatbelt on.

  “Where do you live?” Kaye asked.

  “In the towers by the marsh.”

  “No wonder there’s a pool in the building. All right, should be a quick drive.”

  “Where do you live?” he ventured.

  “In the old part of the city, just south of the campus,” Kaye said.

  “Are you certain you don’t mind driving so far out of your way?”

  “It’s not that far,” Kaye said, smiling. “And at this time of night there’s no traffic.”

  They drove in silence. The assistant professor seemed to have other things on his mind, and he felt no need to break the quiet. The sodium glow from the street lamps washed over the windshield in a regular, uninterrupted rhythm. Leaning into the headrest, he almost fell asleep, and only returned to attentiveness when the dry sound of the blinkers signaled that they were about to leave the motorway and enter the street toward the towers.

  “These are some buildings,” Kaye said, glancing up at the five nineteen-story structures that rose above them. “I remember when all this was wetland. My father used to hunt in the area. He once shot an owl and had it stuffed. I grew up with the poor thing on the mantel.”

  He smiled. “Is that a good memory or a bad one?”

  Kaye laughed. “Bad, mostly, since the bird was dead. Which tower do you live in?”

  “The second one.”

  Kaye stopped by the glass entrance to the second of the six-sided towers. “Do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?” the assistant professor said.

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but no need. The trains from here go to the university.”

  “All right,” Kaye said. “Have a good night and see you tomorrow.”

  “See you,” he said, ignoring the sudden impulse to pull Kaye very close to inhale his breath and fragrance and ask him upstairs. Instead, he closed the car door quietly and continued to the gleaming entrance. He didn’t look back, but followed Kaye’s car as it came into sight and vanished down the slope to the motorway.