Double Helix (12 page)

But I couldn't concentrate. The silence felt oppressive. I turned on the radio, but even that didn't help—I could feel the building's silence behind the music and the chat. Finally, I went into the next room to visit the rabbits.

They'd already been fed, milked, weighed, their cages cleaned, their data entered into the logs. I wandered the rows, looking at them as they slept or sat. They were housed in large cages, in social units. I paused by one cage that held Cottontail 9, Gloria 4, and Foo-foo 14. Foo-foo 14, a New Zealand White, blinked pinkly at me, her whiskers twitching, her expression seemingly quizzical. I found myself unhooking the cage and reaching in for her. She was warm and soft and cuddled down comfortably in my arms. I refastened the cage and stroked her silky head.

The rabbits were very valuable experimental subjects. They were treated well, but one was not supposed to confuse them with pets. That was an emotional line that you shouldn't cross. Still . . . I'd seen Mary Alice petting the rabbits last week, cooing at them. And I didn't see how it would hurt the experiment for Foo-foo 14 to keep me company on a Sunday afternoon.

No one would know, anyway.

I took the rabbit back into the office area and sat down again at the computer, placing her on my lap. In between staring at the data matrix and typing things on the keyboard, I - could reach down from time to time and pet her as she snoozed. It was soothing and it helped me to think. From time to time, too, I looked at my cell phone. But I didn't call anyone, and nobody called me, and after a while I became completely absorbed in mapping the right formulas onto my new data cells and testing my results. Just as I finished fixing an error, I realized my throat was completely dry. Not a big problem; I'd just go to the vending machines for a Coke.

My mistake was taking Foo-foo with me. I didn't think twice, to be honest. She'd been such a cuddly, trouble-free pile of sleepy fur, and I knew we'd be right back in front of the computer within a minute or two. I tucked her in the crook of my arm and let myself out of the lab. Down the hall in front of the soda machine, I fumbled in my pocket for some change, inserted the right amount, and leaned over to grab the can of soda when it descended. Which it did, with the usual clatter.

Only then did I understand that I should have kept both hands on the rabbit.

Foo-foo—valuable Foo-foo, with umpteen generations of genetically engineered rabbit ancestors behind her and a protein in her milk that might potentially save human lives—startled right out of the crook of my arm and bolted down the empty carpeted hall as if there were twenty greyhounds at her heels.

It took me just a second to regroup, but it was a second too long. Foo-foo's flanks disappeared as she loped around the corner to the left.

The next few minutes were like a scene from a bad comedy. “Stop, Foo-foo, stop!” I yelled. I was aware as the words roared out of my throat that they were possibly the most senseless I'd ever spoken.

I sprinted after her.

Only that morning, I'd prided myself on my running prowess, but I had nothing on Foo-foo, and—or so it seemed to me during those endless minutes of pursuit—she took a certain delight in taunting me. How else to explain that she was nearly always in sight, down those long, gray labyrinthine corridors? She'd race down the length of one, me in hot pursuit, and then she'd pause for a few seconds at the end, nose twitching, as if deciding which way to go.

We went left. We went right. We went left again. We went all the way around the building through those empty corridors—and now I was grateful for them; the last thing I wanted was for someone to find out how stupid I'd been. Once I even came within lunging grasp of Foo-foo as she stood sniffing the edge of the wall outside a lab labeled “Robert Judson, PhD.” But as my fingertips grazed her fur, she leaped again into the race and, helplessly, so did I.

Then she went in the direction I'd been dreading: into the central corridor that would inevitably take her to the mezzanine and the main staircase above the reception area. I did not wail aloud, “Foo-foo, no!” I only wanted to.

I slowed my steps. If I was lucky, the security guard below - wouldn't look up and notice a rabbit loping by above his head. But I personally couldn't afford to be seen running. Instead, I prayed that Foo-foo would still be in sight on the other side of the mezzanine, in the corridor, after I'd crossed the open staircase area. I also prayed she wouldn't decide to hop down the double-helix stairs.

My luck held. I didn't see Foo-foo hopping downstairs, I saw no flashes of fur in the reception area, and the security guard's head remained lowered as he read the newspaper. And, on the other side of the mezzanine, I finally saw Foo-foo at the far end of the corridor, tail to me.

I sped up. Predictably, Foo-foo whipped left, past the sign that said “Human Resources,” into a dark, narrow little hallway I'd never noticed before, but which—as I rounded the corner—I saw was a cul-de-sac, with two closed office doors and no way out.

Foo-foo was facing one of the closed office doors. She flirted her tail at me. I approached warily, leaning forward, swaying from side to side as if I were playing goalie in a hockey game. “Foo-foo,” I crooned. “Foo-foo . . .”

The office door on the right opened. Foo-foo darted in, and someone inside—a feminine someone—screamed.

It was all over for me then; I wouldn't be able to keep this incident a secret. But at least the rabbit was firmly cornered—I hoped. “Foo-foo,” I said aloud again, to give warning of my approach. I dove through the open door right past the woman who'd yelped and into the office—

Except it wasn't an office. It was a small private elevator, and I barely stopped moving in time not to hit its far wall. Foo-foo was crouched up against that wall, trembling. I reached down and scooped her up—and saw, with embarrassment, that she'd left a couple of pellets behind.

“Sorry,” I said, over my shoulder. “I'm so sorry. She escaped. But she's just a rabbit; she'll be fine, and you don't have to worry, I've got her now. And I'll clean up—”

I turned to face a startled, gape-jawed Judith Ryan. She was clutching a couple of big plastic bags that said “Gap Kids.”

There was one of those awful elongated silent moments.

Then I said stupidly: “Oh, it's you. Hi.”

She stared at me. Her lip curled. Then she pointed one long white finger. “Get. Out. Of. Here.”

“Sure,” I said, but just at that moment the elevator door—a single steel electronic door positioned behind the regular wooden door that had made me think this was an office—started to slide shut. I lunged for the extensive control panel and managed to find and push the button that reopened the door. “Sorry,” I said again. “Don't you want me to, um, clean—”

“Get. Out.”

I tightened my hold on Foo-foo and Got Out, relieved that this was all there was to it.

But I couldn't kid myself. As I trudged back to my part of the building, rabbit held firmly, I realized that there was a good chance I'd be fired as soon as Judith Ryan made the whole incident known.

Great.

I CONFESSED TO Foo-foo's escape promptly on Monday morning but, apart from giving me the expected lecture on not treating the animals as pets, neither Mary Alice nor Larry seemed worried. “It won't happen again,” I promised earnestly, and Mary Alice replied, “We believe you, Eli. Now, take it easy, and show us those database modifications.”

Larry was already leaning over the computer, but he looked up at my face, grinned, and added, “Although I have to say that I really, really wish I'd seen you chasing Foo-foo through the building.”

“Judith Ryan from Human Resources might call,” I began, as a picture of her rigid face flashed into my mind.

Mary Alice waved her hand dismissively. “HR is about paperwork. They have no real power. Larry's your boss. And, for crying out loud, Wyatt himself hired you, right?”

“Yes, but Judith Ryan—” I could just see her in that elevator, glaring at me.

“He's so young and naïve, it hurts,” said Larry to Mary Alice. He turned to me. “Don't worry about it, Eli. Nobody's going to make you stay after school. You messed up; you fixed it; you told your boss; case closed. Hey, I'll even write you a recommendation someday and I won't say a word about you chasing white rabbits.” He chuckled. “All right, kid?”

“All right,” I said. But still, I jumped every time the lab phone rang that day, and the next, and the next, expecting—something. Some repercussion.

Rationally, I did understand what Larry had said. Foo-foo's escape was a mistake on my part, but not an unforgivable one and not a big deal. More important things probably happened a hundred times a day at Wyatt Transgenics.

But to me the incident had somehow felt significant. Was that just because, as Larry said, I was young and naïve and didn't understand the adult work world? Was I really still expecting to be publicly reprimanded for the slightest transgression?

I replayed that final sequence from the chase in my mind. Cornering Foo-foo in that dark corridor. One of the wooden doors suddenly opening outward. Foo-foo's dash through that doorway. Judith Ryan's scream. My own fast lunge into the little elevator—

Wait. That was it. That was what was bugging me. Wasn't it a little peculiar, putting an elevator behind a regular wooden office door? The other elevators in the building looked like elevators. They had sliding steel doors that weren't concealed by anything. They had push buttons outside.

Foo-foo hadn't discovered a small elevator. Foo-foo had discovered a
hidden
elevator.

Or not. Maybe I was being melodramatic. Maybe it was a
private
elevator. Why shouldn't there be a private elevator in a big building where important work was done? Probably it was desirable for some people—politicians, visiting scientists—to tour Wyatt Transgenics quietly, bypassing the public entries and corridors. Maybe there was even more than one private elevator or corridor in such a big, specialized building. The more I thought about that, the less strange it seemed. And, I reflected, if it really bothered me, I could always ask Dr. Wyatt himself. “I noticed this private elevator over in the HR wing. What's that for?”

Yes, I could imagine myself asking him that question. Casually. I really could.

But I could also imagine him staring at me incredulously and replying with the obvious. “So people can move between floors without other people staring at them, when necessary.”

With that, the whole incident did truly seem trivial. More rabbit-chasing. It wasn't like I didn't have other things, important things, to think about.

One of those things, of course, was Viv. I missed her. I missed her every day as the week passed. A thousand times in my mind I reached for the phone to call her; ten thousand times I imagined her with me. Once, on Thursday, I saw on my cell phone's message log that she'd called—her phone number flashed up at me as if the digits were in red—and my heart jumped. But she'd hung up without leaving a message. I thought about calling her back, but I turned off the phone instead and put it away.

Because, as much as I missed her—all right, longed for her—I couldn't imagine being with Viv now. Not with her knowing about my mother . . . not with her looking at me with that knowledge, that pity, in her eyes.

The need for distraction pulled at me. The long empty weekend ahead haunted me. I wasn't tied to Viv anymore. There was no need to feel disloyal.

So, on Friday morning I called Kayla Matheson and asked her to play tennis with me that evening. She said yes, promptly, and—unlike Viv—hung up without extraneous chat. That night, I left work on time, with everybody else. I was glad, so glad, to have plans. Plans that, if I was lucky, - wouldn't involve much talk.

Kayla and I had arranged to meet promptly at six on the Cambridge public courts, located not far from Dr. Wyatt's big house. The moment I saw her—in another minuscule white tennis dress, this one with a square neck that exposed the line of her neck and shoulders—I couldn't believe that I hadn't been able to remember exactly how she looked. How she moved. How she . . .

“We're over on the second court,” she said cheerfully. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You want first serve?”

“Sure.”

I stood back by the baseline, liking her for not wasting any time chatting. She smiled and then got a charming, serious expression on her face as she gripped her racket and prepared to toss the ball into the air with her left hand.

This really could be fun, I realized suddenly. Kayla looked good. She was clearly athletic. We'd have a nice rally. I'd go easy; keep the ball in play—

Kayla's serve exploded from her racket like a rocket. I could not have returned it if I'd tried. “One–love!” she called a second later. And she grinned.

Our eyes met and held. I knew she saw how shocked I was. Finally, I nodded. I felt a smile of my own pulling at the corners of my mouth and I let it happen. Kayla laughed.

I jogged away to retrieve the ball. I lobbed it back to her, to where she was now standing, close to the net. “Okay,” I said. “I'm really ready now. I won't underestimate you again.”

“Good,” she said seriously, and moved to serve.

I backed up. Her serve came smashing down again, but this time I expected it. I slammed it cross-court, near the net, but she was there, with a backhand shot that angled the ball forcefully behind where I was, so that I had to race to return it—and she was already at the net, leaping into the air to intercept the ball and dink it, with the merest calculated flick of her strong right wrist, so that it landed just barely over the net on my side.