The Missing Link (20 page)

The office had been stale and lifeless, but this place was full of activity, as though the work was continuing even as Maggie slept. Machines hummed and droned and buzzed. One blinked a blue light from time to time, and another, with an electronic display, seemed to be counting or timing something. But despite all this I was oddly disappointed. I had expected something much more dramatic, and more comprehensible, somehow. I had thought that if I only saw the lab, everything would become clear in a flash. But these machines and vessels and tools meant nothing to me.

I was ready to turn back, but Claus had spotted something that I hadn’t. At the far end of the room, partly concealed by some white lab coats that were hanging on it, was another door.

I almost didn’t go in; certain that it was just another washroom, or a storeroom or something. But Claus urged me on, and I opened the door and peeped in. It was neither of those things. It was a fully-equipped operating theatre.

There was a large steel table in the centre. Above it, a pair of overhead lights gazed down like gigantic insect eyes. At the head of the table stood a trolley and a drip stand, both of them sprouting tubes. Beside them stood a bulky machine with a TV screen, which I recognised from a medical programme I had watched. Ultrasound. On a workbench nearby were more plastic-wrapped syringes, an autoclave, and an array of surgical tools.

I couldn’t make sense of it. What sort of
operations
could Maggie be performing in here? Was she operating on the animals’ brains, somehow? I had heard about microchip implants. Maybe that was what she was doing, or something equally bizarre?

Claus tugged at my ear with tiny paws.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Look,’ he said.

‘I
am
looking,’ I said, scanning along the shelves of bottles and tubes and flasks, the boxes of needles and swabs and dressings.

‘Not there!’ shrieked Claus, and there was terror in his tiny voice. ‘Behind you!’

3

I TURNED AROUND
and saw the reason for Claus’s fear. On a deep shelf which ran the whole length of the wall above the door, stood a display of horrors. For a moment I couldn’t take it in; it just looked like a row of huge bottles, filled with some kind of murky fluid. Then I saw what was in them. The results of Maggie’s experiments.

They were all dead; little corpses preserved in yellowish fluid. I steeled myself to look more closely. Some of them seemed almost normal. There was a rat with a rather large head, and a chicken that appeared to be quite all right until I noticed that it had no eyes. But other things were desperately deformed. There was a cat that had something like hands instead of paws, a rabbit with an extra pair of legs sprouting from its shoulders, and a thing that looked like a fish with a dog’s head.

There were worse things, too; things that I couldn’t even begin to identify. But the worst of them all was the biggest of all the specimens. It was human, or nearly human, and about the size of a newborn infant. Its features were quite clear, and its milky eyes gazed into eternity. But there the clarity ended. The corpse’s hands and
feet
were leathery and claw-like, and the whole of its body was covered with tiny quills, from which a fine, yellow down emerged, turned into hair-like strands by the fluid.

I was afraid I was going to throw up. Below my hairline, Claus was in a state of extreme agitation, running backwards and forwards along my collar, saying, ‘Let’s go, let’s get out of here!’

I didn’t need any more persuasion. A few seconds later we were back in the garage with the trap door closed and locked.

Claus ran down my arm, jumped on to the trunk, then vanished beneath the clutter in the corner. I called him three times, but he didn’t reply. He had gone home, and he was staying there.

And I could think of no better plan.

4

BUT THERE WAS
no way I could take Danny with me. I couldn’t possibly show him what I had just seen, and he wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain. I wasn’t sure yet what I planned to do. It was all too much for me, and I felt too young and inexperienced to deal with it. I wanted to phone home, talk to Mom and Maurice about it all; see what they suggested. I knew they couldn’t come for us, but maybe they’d send the police and they would sort out this mess.

Because now I knew what Maurice had been talking about when he said he could ‘shop’ Maggie. I knew nothing about the laws relating to scientific work, but I was certain that creating mutations had to be illegal.

I hoped the phone in Bettyhill would be working. I hoped Obi and Kanobi would remember me if I came across them in the dark, and that they would allow me to leave Fourth World. And I hoped that I wouldn’t have to do it alone.

I woke Tina quietly. She sat bolt upright, staring into space.

‘Christie. What is it?’

‘You have to get up.’

She rubbed her eyes and yawned. ‘I dreamt I was back in Dublin, on the street. I thought you were Ronan.’

‘Shh!’ I whispered, terrified that we would wake Maggie. ‘There are terrible things going on here, Tina. I got into the lab. It’s a chamber of horrors. She’s experimenting on live animals!’

Tina stared at me, trying to absorb what I was saying.

‘I don’t believe Mother would do that,’ she said, at last. ‘What kind of experiments?’

She stared at me, wide-eyed, as I described what I had seen.

‘I’ll show you if you don’t believe me,’ I said.

But she shook her head. ‘What makes you think Mother made them?’

‘Of course she did! How else could they have got there?’

‘She might have collected them,’ said Tina. ‘They used to have sideshows with stuff like that at fairs and circuses. She probably bought them from someone.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m sure she didn’t. She has an operating theatre down there. Come and see.’

But Tina didn’t want to know. She was determined to believe her own explanation, and nothing I said would convince her otherwise. I think she was asleep again before I even left the room.

It was all up to me then. I went back to my bedroom and went through what remained of the gear I had brought with me. There wasn’t
much
: my penknife, pyjamas, the space-blanket. Inside a spare woolly sock I discovered the phonecard and, with a pang of guilt, the four letters for Bettyhill which I had never delivered. I was sorry to let the postmistress down, but I hadn’t time to be bothered with them now.

I stuffed everything else into my pillowcase and pocketed the money that was left. I had intended to return it to Maggie, but now I was glad that I hadn’t. If I wound up having to walk home, I was going to need it.

Someone else, would, too. Because I had already decided that I wasn’t going to leave Fourth World alone.

As I slipped into the shed, Sparky woofed anxiously, but when I spoke to her she recognised my voice and went quiet. By the light of Maggie’s torch I located Loki and, rubbing Sparky’s head to distract her, I slipped the tiny pup into the pocket of my jacket. I knew she was too young to leave her mother, but I would get milk somehow along the way. And I needed her. Partly because she was my dog, and our attachment to each other was already strong. But there was another reason as well. If anyone ever called my story into doubt, Loki would be my evidence.

I straightened up, whispered goodbye to Sparky, and stepped into the dark courtyard, on my way home.

5

BUT THAT WAS
as far as I got.

‘Hello, Christie,’ said Maggie. ‘Going somewhere?’

I didn’t answer. Adrenalin was pumping through me, and my body was raring to make a run for it, but in the moonlight I could just make out the shadowy shapes of Obi and Kanobi, standing behind Maggie like henchmen.

‘I think you have something belonging to me,’ she said.

I felt in my pockets. I had three things if the money counted. Four, if Loki did.

I handed over the torch.

‘That isn’t what I had in mind,’ she said.

I handed over the key, and she pocketed it.

‘Where were you going?’ she said. Her voice was calm and kind, and I was reminded of how I had felt about her since the first time I met her, and how she had let me down.

It hurt. Bitterness poisoned my voice. ‘I’m going home.’

‘But why creep about in the middle of the night? You’re free to go home any time you like.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I snapped. ‘You have no phone.
There
are no cars, no buses, no trains. I feel like a prisoner here. A slave.’

‘Oh, Christie,’ she said, and the sorrow in her voice sounded so genuine that it scratched my hurt feelings like sandpaper. ‘You should have told me you were unhappy here. There are other ways to travel; you know?’

‘Like what? Tony and trap?’

She turned to the West and the breeze lifted her thick hair and tossed it around her face.

‘We’re on an island, Christie,’ she said. ‘All around us are water and wind.’

‘So what?’ I asked, sounding like Tina. Like Tina
used
to sound.

‘Have you ever travelled under sail?’

A boat. It hadn’t crossed my mind.

‘No.’

‘If you want to go home I’ll get you there. I promise you that. Even if I have to man the tiller myself. But you must let me show you something first.’

My hackles rose. ‘What?’

‘My lab.’

‘Uh-uh,’ I said. ‘I’ve already seen it. You won’t get me down there again in a fit.’

‘I thought you wanted to know what we’re doing here,’ said Maggie. ‘I’d like to explain it to you. Let you in on my secrets.’ She paused, and when I said nothing she went on, ‘I thought you were interested in science.’

I gave a humourless laugh which I hoped sounded scornful. ‘Tell me your secrets and let me run off with them?’

‘I have no reason to mistrust you, Christie. But perhaps you don’t trust me?’

I found that I didn’t. I had no intention of ending up on that steel table. But I was still overwhelmed by curiosity about the animals, and how they came to be able to talk. I thought about it for so long that the dogs got bored and flopped down at my feet with enormous sighs. Then I made up my mind.

‘I’ll come down to the lab with you. But only on one condition.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Tina comes with us.’

I saw Maggie’s white teeth flash in the moonlight as she smiled.

‘Go and get her, then,’ she said.

6

EVEN WITH TINA
at my side I was petrified as I went back down the stairs below the garage. As we entered the lab my knees were weak, and I found myself listening out for the hiss of knockout gas, and watching Maggie like a hawk in case she grabbed a syringe and plunged it into my thigh. But all she did was clear a pair of tall stools so Tina and I could sit down. As for herself, she wandered around as she spoke to us; a woman in her element; as comfortable, I reflected, as an eel in mud.

‘It’s hard to know where to begin,’ she said.

‘At the beginning,’ Tina suggested.

‘But where is it?’ said Maggie. ‘Not easy to find.’

‘Fourth World?’

But she said, ‘No. Before that. I came from a line of chemists. That was where the money came from; the pharmaceutical industries that my grandparents owned. But I was always more interested in genetics than in chemistry, and that’s what I studied at college. In Oxford. That’s where I met Maurice.’

‘Who’s Maurice?’ asked Tina.

‘Danny’s dad,’ I said. ‘What was he doing there?’

‘Medicine,’ said Maggie. ‘He was one of their most promising students, despite the fact that he seemed to spend most of his life partying and acting the clown.’

I found it hard to imagine Maurice acting the clown, but I didn’t say anything.

‘We struck up a relationship and spent hours discussing the latest trends in medicine and genetic engineering and, when I suddenly came into a big inheritance, we decided to set up together. To combine our skills in a place where we wouldn’t be watched too closely.’

‘Fourth World,’ said Tina.

Maggie nodded. ‘We worked well together, Maurice and I,’ she said, a little wistfully, I thought. ‘We made mistakes, but we learnt from them. But after Danny was born, Maurice began to get cold feet. He found it difficult to accept Danny for what he was, and we began to have disagreements. Maurice wanted to call it a day and close the lab down, but I maintained that we had only just got established, and that we shouldn’t be frightened off the work we were doing.’

Her gaze settled on the workbench beside me, but it was the past she was seeing.

‘Misunderstandings arose, and one day, without warning, Maurice left, taking Danny with him.’

‘Why didn’t you go after him?’ asked Tina, and there was an edge to her voice which made
me
remember her words about absent mothers, and the hurt that still surrounded the issue for her.

‘I did,’ said Maggie. ‘But I couldn’t find them. Maurice’s parents put up a stone wall and refused to tell me where they were. There was nothing I could do. It wasn’t until last year that he eventually contacted me.’

She turned to me.

‘Your mother persuaded him,’ she said. ‘I’ll always be grateful to her for that.’

Poor Mom. When they found out where we were, she would never be allowed to forget it.

‘In the meantime,’ Maggie went on, ‘I was stuck. Alone up here with all the work and all the responsibility but no one to help. I was in despair; I nearly gave up. Then, one day, I was reading through a scientific journal and I came across a reference to Bernard.’

‘Sandy’s dad,’ said Tina.

‘That’s right. The article concerned a debate over a paper he had written about his research. He claimed to have made one of the most significant discoveries in the history of mankind, but the scientific establishment had dismissed him as a crank, and he was unable to get funding or facilities to pursue his research. So I wrote to him.’

‘But what was his discovery?’ I said.

Maggie returned from the past and looked at me, her eyes bright with remembered excitement. ‘He claimed,’ she said, ‘to have discovered the missing link.’