I knew she hadn’t escaped from the island. Or from the horror that was our future. I meant her mind had escaped, forever. He could hurt the bird-monster, and that was bad. But better to be a monster than to be a prisoner on this island and have a human mind.
“I suppose you mean emotional pain,” said Dr. Franklin, cheerfully. “Which I’m afraid can’t be avoided in your case. I’m afraid you are both bound to suffer some discomfort in the next phase of my research, but I will cause as little physical pain as possible. I am never needlessly cruel!
However
. . . you may be interested to learn that Miranda is actually back with us. She had been seen circling over the compound. That’s why you’re here. I’ve decided, seeing the way you have responded to the second infusion, that I want her back under close observation, right now. I don’t want to use the stun ring. That would be harsh. . . . So we’re going to leave you here for a while. I’m afraid you have to be under restraint, after the way you’ve behaved, but that may be all to the good. If Miranda can recognize that her friend is in trouble, that may bring her in.” He gestured toward the orderlies. I saw the net, the long spiked poles. One of the men was carrying a rifle.
I choked back a cry of protest. I knew it would do no good.
“Oh, don’t worry, we’re not going to injure her. The rifle fires tranquilizer darts. Now we’d better get out of sight,” Dr. Franklin went on. “It would help if you would call her up on your radio link. She may no longer be able to understand or respond consciously, but I believe it will have an effect.”
I stared at him, and shook my head.
Our creator frowned. “Semi, Miranda’s loss is a blow to me too. Of course, I knew that I was making her psychological survival more difficult: by making her my favorite and then abandoning her, by giving her the ability to fly, and then giving her partial freedom. I had to test my transgenics to the limit. Naturally I made things harder for Miranda, because she seemed the stronger of the two of you. But that doesn’t mean I’m not
sorry.
Now please be sensible and cooperate, so that I don’t have to hurt her. Don’t you want to know if she still remembers you?”
I told him what he could do with the idea that I would betray my friend.
He shrugged, his eyes bright and cool. He wasn’t angry. “Resistant to the last. Well done! It doesn’t matter, we can fake your call sign.” He nodded to Dr. Skinner.
Skinner obediently put on a headset and did some tapping on the computer keyboard.
I started to struggle, hopelessly but furiously. I shouted at Skinner, “How can you do this? He’s mad, but you’re not mad! How can you let things like this happen! Help me!”
Skinner winced as if he could hear the jungle cat howling, but he wouldn’t look at me. He said to Dr. Franklin, “I’m picking up a response. She’s coming in again.”
Dr. Franklin spoke to the orderlies in Spanish. They moved off, under the trees. He stayed where he was, staring at the sky.
“Ha! There she is! How splendidly she flies!”
I could see the black T-shape of Miranda flying low. She zoomed in fast over the science buildings. Then I
did
call her up. There was nothing to be gained from keeping quiet now. I called her name, I yelled silently,
Miranda! Get away from here! It’s a trap!
There was no answer, no sense of her presence in my mind. It all felt blank, blanker than the white place. I screamed at her, aloud, “Get away from here! Get away from here!”
Dr. Franklin turned to me with an exasperated expression. “Semi, please!”
Then Miranda was gone. She’d vanished.
“Where’s she gone!” exclaimed Dr. Franklin. “She saw us! Is she flying away again?”
“No,” said Skinner. “No. . . . She’s close, don’t know where, too many buildings—”
I started shouting again, for what good it would do: “Miranda, fly!
Go away,
it’s a trap!”
Everyone, including the orderlies with their big net and their prodding poles, was looking this way and that: where had she gone? Then as suddenly as she’d disappeared, she was there again. She was overhead, she was diving into the enclosure. Her wings looked huge. She swooped into the mango tree and crouched on a branch: a monster out of a scary legend, winged and bird-headed, but human enough to horrify.
Her beak opened in a fierce, harsh cry—
“Aha!” exclaimed Dr. Franklin. “Excellent!
Now
what, I wonder . . . ?” He added something in Spanish. The orderlies moved in on the mango tree, slowly and cautiously.
I shouted, “Miranda! Get out of here!” I thought she didn’t know me. She wasn’t my friend Miranda. She was a weird wild animal, obeying vague memories that she no longer understood. . . . That’s what I thought. The bird-monster turned her head from side to side, fixing Dr. Franklin with a fierce, empty glare. Then she bent down and very deliberately tore at the black bracelet on her ankle with her razor-sharp beak.
She had it off in about two seconds, and glared at us again, defiantly.
I understood she always could have done that. But she had stayed with me.
“Oh Miranda,” I whispered. “You could have flown away. You could have brought back help. You could have saved us both. Why didn’t you?”
Then I thought,
That’s not a monster, that’s Miranda
again!
Even though I knew what horrors awaited us, my heart leaped for joy—
“Excellent!” cried Dr. Franklin, almost clapping his hands. “Oh, excellent, Miranda!”
The orderlies didn’t think this development was so excellent. They bunched closer together, nervously holding out their poles. They didn’t seem keen to get close enough to fling the net. She was a bird as big as a golden eagle, with a fierce beak, razor-sharp talons, and wings strong enough to break a man’s arm if she got a good swipe at him. And she wasn’t looking in a good temper.
While they hesitated, something was happening in Dr. Franklin’s zoo. The noise from that courtyard had been steadily growing. Now it was a confused roar of squealing and grunting. A horde of weird animals poured into view, racing out from between the nearby buildings: the capybaras, the wild pigs, the parrots and the bats flapping overhead; others I hadn’t seen before. It looked like some kind of weird hallucination: a hideous, freakish mob, all of them running crazy with panic and sudden freedom.
“What in hell—!” yelled Dr. Franklin.
“She’s let them out!” I shouted. “Miranda let them out!”
Miranda leaped from her perch, and flew at Dr. Franklin’s face, talons outspread—
The orderlies started yelling. Dr. Franklin struggled with Miranda on the edge of the pool. I saw his face slashed red, I saw him rolling on the ground, beaten around the head by blows from her wings. Transgenic animals were racing around the enclosure, squealing. It was pandemonium. I was screaming madly,
“Leave him!
They’ve got a gun! Fly away!”
Dr. Franklin fell into the water. He was floundering and gasping—it seemed the mad scientist couldn’t swim. Some of the orderlies were trying to reach him, some were trying to throw the net over Miranda. She was stabbing at eyes and clawing at faces, shrieking, flying free of the net and the rods—
Something hit my chair. I wasn’t strapped in: I went flying. I couldn’t save myself, my arms were wrapped up and fastened at the back by the straps of the straitjacket. I hit the gravel with a thump, folded arms first, winded. Someone stooped over me, I felt a tug. A voice whispered in my ear:
“Head for the jetty, the launch is
still
there”
. . . and then Dr. Skinner was on his feet, running to join the others. He didn’t look back.
Miranda had taken flight, but the net was tangled around her, hampering her wings. Dr. Franklin was out of the pool. All the men were running after Miranda, Skinner with them, and Dr. Franklin, soaking wet. He was shouting,
“Get a dart into her! Fire as soon as you
have a clear shot!”
The restraint on my arms had gone slack. Skinner had unfastened the straps at my back. I struggled free of the jacket. The enclosure was empty. I ran (I mean I staggered and stumbled, my legs were very wobbly) to the gate.
Oh no.
It was on a spring, it had shut and locked itself behind the men when they’d rushed through.
No!
I thought.
I will not be beaten!
I looked up at the fence and knew I couldn’t climb it.
Something flashed into my mind.
Those patterns that Miranda used to make and break up—
The one pattern that she had
made sure
I would see.
We had been stuck in here, me making my plans, and she making her own, with no way to share our secrets. But I caught on fast. Miranda had released the animals by opening their locked cages. She must have learned the code for this keypad as well. She could have opened our cage any time, the same as she could have pulled off that ring.
If there’d been any point. If I could have gotten away—
Five seedpods. Six red flower petals. Three manky pieces of melon rind, nine sticks, two dead butterflies. Five, six, three, nine, two. I slipped my hand through the mesh, reached for the keypad on the lock, and tapped in the code. It took me a couple of times. I was drenched in sweat. My fingers slipped off the keys, and they weren’t . . . they were out of the habit
of being
fingers. But I did it. The lock clicked, I was out. Leaving the noise of the chase somewhere behind me, I set off at a stumbling trot for the science blocks.
It was bad to be inside those buildings again. Even the coolness of the air-conditioning reminded me of terror. The operating room had to be somewhere near there: the place where we’d been given our infusions. The place where our evil creator would take Miranda, and me too, and torture us again, if we couldn’t save ourselves. I opened door after door. Empty, bright, clinical rooms. I found a walk-in cold cupboard with stacked shelves, but everything was general science supplies, genetic-engineering chemicals in packets and tubs; pieces of animals in plastic jars. I found a chest freezer, full of opaque white boxes holding who knows what horrors, but everything in there was heavily crusted with ice; it was obvious that nothing had been touched for a long time. At last I found an ordinary-looking kitchen fridge, standing on a counter in a long narrow room full of other, stranger machinery. The label on the door said Transgenic Project H.
H
for
human
?
I looked inside, and found two stacks of small white boxes.
One of the stacks was labeled S, one was labeled M.
I started opening the boxes. I found little vials of blood, clear fluid, little gobbets of tissue. Everything was dated.
These must be samples taken from me and from
Miranda, at different stages of our treatment.
In the last of the boxes labeled S, I found more of those tubes of powder. The label said Infusion Stage B. No date.
I scrabbled through Miranda’s boxes and found
her
Infusion Stage B.
No tubes of powder. A hypodermic, and glistening ampoules of pale fluid.
That explains why she couldn’t be dosed sneakily, like
me,
I thought.
Someone has to give her injections.
My heart sank. How would I know what to do? How much to give her at once? But there was no time to worry about it. There was a lab coat hanging on the back of a door. I grabbed it, spread it out and tumbled boxes into it, the two labeled Infusion Stage B and as many others as I could grab. I didn’t know what might be useful. I’d tied this bundle around my waist and I was about to leave, when I saw there was another stack of white boxes, behind our two. Each of them had a taped initial and a date, too.
The initial was A.
There was an Infusion Stage B box, with the initial A.
Arnie?
But Arnie’s dead,
I thought.
The way Dr. Franklin and Skinner had behaved didn’t make sense, if they’d really had someone reporting on our conversations. Dr. Franklin hadn’t seemed to know if his radio telepathy was working properly or not. Dr. Skinner had talked about brain waves, but he’d been shocked when he saw me prove that I was still human inside. It all pointed to things being the way Arnie had told us. The doctors could detect brain activity in our speech centers, but they didn’t know what we were saying. They weren’t sure if we were saying anything human. But, wait, it was Arnie who had told us that.
Arnie?
I tugged the bundle from my waist, unfastened it, swept the A boxes in there and tied it up again. I didn’t clearly know why I was doing that, but it seemed I had to. I was wondering whether I should try to do some random vandalism or just get out of there. I was going to call Miranda, and I hoped and prayed she would answer me this time.
But someone called me first.
No, he didn’t call me. I had been calling his name, in my mind, strongly enough to make contact: and he was answering me.
Semi? Semi? Hey, hey, SEMI?
It was Arnie. And he was somewhere close by.
chapter twelve
It’s a trap,
I thought.
So near to escape. I couldn’t bear to stop now.
Don’t trust anyone on this island,
I thought.
They’re
all working for Dr. Franklin.
Semi, Semi . . . ,
called the voice in my mind, getting desperate, and it sounded like Arnie. Not a fake. It sounded to me like that annoying, sarcastic, lonely boy—
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.