Dr. Franklin's Island (11 page)

My pool is four meters deep, all over. (The fish-Semi can judge distances very precisely. I don’t know how, she just can: and then the girl-Semi can translate what the fish-Semi knows into meters and so on; it’s one of those dual nationality things.) There is a viewing window in a sunken passage at one end, where humans (such as the orderly who pours live plankton into the pool for me to eat) can stand and watch me swimming about. I don’t like being watched, but fortunately I don’t want to go down to that level much. I’m not a bottom-living fish. I like the sunlit water. And of course, I like to stay near Miranda. We don’t talk to each other on our mental radio as much as you’d think. When we were in the fake hotel room, we used to ignore the fact that Dr. Franklin had us under surveillance. We feel different about that now. Maybe it’s because we’re so much more helpless. But at least we can see each other, and be company for each other.

We’re no longer human.

We’re no longer part of an experiment, even an evil, crazy experiment.

We’re failed leftovers, like the rest of the animals in Dr. Franklin’s zoo.

But it isn’t entirely horrible. The other good thing about being changed, besides not having to learn how to swim and eat and so on, is that
our minds have been
changed too.

The honest truth is, the fish-Semi part of me would be completely happy swimming, and measuring things, and thinking long, deep, dreamy sunlit thoughts . . . if it wasn’t that I was stuck in this rotten little tiny pool. I know Miranda feels the same. She loves being a bird, she hates being a bird in a cage. It’s strange. Before the change, we’d have thought that losing our human feelings, becoming mutant-monsters in our
minds
would have been the worst horror imaginable. In fact it turns out to be the only thing that makes life possible. The pain of loss, the pain of being parted from our families, is something we’ve had to live with for a long time: and it’s still there. But there’s no disgust and horror at being monsters. It isn’t even so bad not being able to talk together. Often when we were castaways, we’d spend hours together each doing our separate things, hardly saying a word. We do the same in our enclosure.

What do animals do with themselves all day? A lot of nothing, basically.

Miranda hops and flaps around in the trees and bushes that grow in the border around my pool, plays about with twigs and flowers, and eats the fruit and stuff the orderly leaves for her. Or she flies up and down in the open air above the branches; or she perches in the roof and spies out over the compound. I glide around, I swim up and down, I filter plankton (so far, the strangest thing about being a fish: eating is like breathing. I don’t feel as if I’m
doing
anything). I float on the surface, feeling the sun.

I have the strangest feeling that we could live like this, and be fairly content.

If only we weren’t prisoners.

Sometimes, I accidentally do something that makes me feel how strong I really am, and how fast I could really move, and it’s amazing.

I think,
No wonder I nearly died, turning into this
amazing creature!

But we are prisoners.

Every day the orderlies bring food, clear the remains of yesterday’s food, and skim the pool. They’re careful, but they have to open the gate to the enclosure. It’s big enough for Miranda to run through, though nothing like wide enough for her to spread her wings.

She never tries it.

We haven’t talked about the fact that Miranda can get away but I can’t. There’s no need to spell it out. I know she knows.

The plan would have to be that she leaves and somehow fetches help.

Somehow.

Day Eighty-two

Today Dr. Franklin finally came to visit. He turned up about halfway through the morning. I was floating in the middle of the pool, dreaming, when I was warned by Miranda, who came zooming down from the peak of the steel-mesh roof. She croaked loudly in her harsh bird-voice, and in my head I heard her say,
Semi!
Watch out, here comes the boss.

My eyes are at the front of my . . . my
me,
my delta shape. I glided over to the side, watching as if from the periscope of a submarine. In my mind I flipped the switches that had to be switched, to translate the foreshortened fish-me view of the enclosure fence into a human-type image. I watched carefully as Dr. Franklin came up to the gate. I was hoping I’d glimpse the keys he pressed on the lockpad. I hadn’t managed to do that when the orderly came in, not yet. If we could get to know the combination, Miranda could easily make keystrokes with her beak, and have that gate open. Which wouldn’t do me much good, but at least she would be free.

Dr. Franklin didn’t open the gate. He was carrying a folding chair. He unfolded it, about halfway along the fence, sat down, and took what looked like a mobile phone from his pocket. Both of us came and watched him: me in the water, Miranda pacing on the tiles by the side of the pool. She held her birdlike head on one side, one fierce eye fixed on me, and one on the mad scientist.

“Welcome to your new world,” he said. “Miranda, Semi.” He settled his floppy sun hat more securely on his thick gray hair, and stared at us greedily. “Amazing,” he muttered. “Amazing!” An incredibly smug expression spread over his face. “A truly extraordinary breakthrough. One day the world will share my triumph. One day, I will be able to reveal what I have achieved! But in the meantime,” he added, with a horrible smirk, “there is much that can be done. Much that can be learned, from these two first successes.”

Miranda shrieked. I lifted my tail and splashed it hard on the top of the water.

We were saying:
What do you mean, successes?
You’ve turned us into monsters, not superhumans. Now
what are you going to do? Keep us locked up here forever?

Dr. Franklin shifted his chair, cleared his throat, and settled a little farther back from the fence. “I wonder how much you can still understand of normal human speech. It’s rather difficult to tell. But I know you have discovered your radio telepathy. I know that you are making use of it! Neither of you ever asked me how you would be able to communicate in your transgenic forms. You never did show much curiosity, not even you, Miranda, my star pupil. I was surprised at that. How will humans who have been altered so much that they cannot talk be able to work together? How will they be able to
stay human
? You didn’t even think of that, apparently. But I had identified the problem, and I have solved it!”

I was amazed that he had the nerve to come and chat to us like this, after locking us up, putting us in straitjackets, turning us into monsters. Of course he was mad. But I suppose this is also the way normal people treat normal animals, a lot of the time. We keep zoo animals in cages, we keep dogs and horses as servants, we keep cows and pigs and sheep to kill and eat: and yet we somehow expect them to
like
us.

“Yes,” Dr. Franklin went on, happily, “I have made you telepathic. Yet another dream of humanity that I have caused to come true. You are very highly privileged. You have left me far behind. I envy your powers, tremendously!”

Huh,
I thought, bitterly.
You haven’t got a microchip
in your brain. You haven’t been turned into a monster.
You stayed human, and you treated us like guinea pigs.

He stared at us. We stared back, like dumb animals.

“I wonder what’s really going on in those heads,” he muttered. “Difficult to say, difficult to say. There is certainly human brain activity, but the animal traits are very strong. Perhaps too strong.” For a moment he looked worried. Then he perked up. “But that’s good! I will be testing pyschological survival in extreme conditions. Which is exactly what I planned to do.”

Miranda spread her wings, and flew up into the branches of a tree.

Dr. Franklin stopped talking and gazed at her in wonder. “Amazing,” he muttered again. “Amazing! I have created flight!” He sounded so pleased with himself, and so completely oblivious of what he’d done to
us,
I seriously wanted to kill him.

“Well, well. You both seem to have adapted excellently, so far. Physically you are in very good shape, psychologically . . . hmm. We shall see. Now for the next phase of the experiment. In a few days, I am going to open the aviary. You’ll be able to fly free, Miranda.”

Miranda shrieked.

It was a yell of surprise. I don’t think she even meant to startle him. But Dr. Franklin jumped up, clutching at his hat. The chair jerked backward and tipped over.

I saw the expression on his face. He looked
scared.

In a flash, I saw Miranda the way she must look to a human being. A great birdlike creature with strangely human limbs, beautiful but nightmarish. Big as an eagle, with wings that could break your arm at a stroke, a hooked beak, strong taloned feet as dextrous as human hands. I’d seen the orderly being very careful about opening the enclosure gate. I’d thought it was to be sure she didn’t get out.
He
was probably scared too. For a moment I felt pleased.
Good,
I thought.
Serves them all
right.
But that was a stupid reaction. Dr. Skinner had been afraid of us from the start, because we made him feel so guilty. It hadn’t done us any good.
They’re afraid
because we are monsters,
I thought.
Even the man who
made us thinks we are monsters.
I didn’t dare to look at Miranda, in case she was thinking the same thing.

“You’ll be ringed and tagged, of course,” the scientist went on, having recovered his nerve. “If you try to fly out of the valley you’ll get a shock. If you persist, or if you interfere with my staff in any way, you will get a stronger shock, enough to stun you and render you unable to fly. We’ll have to come out and find you and pick you up. Other than that, you’ll be free to do as you please. What will happen, I wonder. Will you stay with your friend, who cannot leave her pool? Or will your animal instincts take over, and will you fly away and become a strange new part of this island’s wildlife? We shall see, we shall see. . . . I believe that there are still two human minds in there. What I want to know is whether your strong friendship, together with the internal radio link I have given you, will enable you to
remain
human, in this challenging situation. I will be observing your behavior carefully. You supported each other on the beach, and through your treatment, most remarkably. Let’s see if you can hold on to your humanity now.”

He stood up and folded his chair. “That’s the vital question. Perhaps you will fail, you will fall by the wayside, and become no more than the couple of exotic animals that you appear. It matters little. I count this first trial a major success, even if it goes no further. Yes, almost more successful than I had dared to hope! Already, you have served the future of the race, Semi and Miranda. You should be very proud.”

Miranda shrieked again, and launched herself into the air. She swept into the roof of our big cage with one beat of her powerful wings, and went hurtling to and fro, from one end of the enclosure to the other, crying wildly. Dr. Franklin stood staring at her. His mouth had dropped open. For a moment he almost looked horrified, as if even he couldn’t quite believe what he had done to the teenage girl Miranda used to be. His star pupil. Then he frowned and shook his head, and hurried away, clutching his hat with one hand, his chair with the other.

chapter nine

On Day Eighty-three, Dr. Franklin came to the enclosure with two orderlies. The uniformed men came into the cage, armed with long metal rods and a big net. They threw the net over Miranda, and held her down. Then Dr. Franklin came into the cage, wearing heavy gloves, reached through the net and fitted a black rubbery ring like a thick watch strap on her leg. There was no need to throw the net over Miranda, or poke her with those rods. She wasn’t doing anything, she didn’t try to resist. But the men behaved as if she was simply a dangerous animal, and Dr. Franklin did nothing to stop them. He treated her the same way. It was horrible to watch: it made me feel sick.

But after it was done, the men went off and came back with a mobile crane. They unfastened a big section of the steel mesh roof, and Miranda flew free.

On Day Eighty-five, I found the sluice covers in the side walls of my pool.

I’d realized, after swimming around in it for a while, that my water was genuine seawater—not fake, saltwater aquarium substitute. Semi-the-girl wouldn’t have known the difference, but Semi-the-fish couldn’t be fooled about things like that. In my dual-nationality mind, it was as if I
remembered
everything that a natural-born tropical manta ray would know. Only better than remembering, because this wasn’t like Semi-the-girl remembering facts she’d learned, and sometimes getting them wrong. It was certain knowledge, like knowing the difference between light and dark. These “memories” must have come from the fish DNA that had been grafted into my human DNA. But because I was girl as well as fish, I could think about my inbuilt animal knowledge with a human mind. I really enjoyed that.

The cover was a round flap of metal, set thirty centimeters above the floor of the pool. It was eighty-four centimeters across, as wide as the front section of my delta body; and painted turquoise, like the plastic-coated concrete of the wall. Water lapped through a set of ridged gaps out into a pipe, or tunnel, on the other side. There was another, smaller cover on the opposite wall, with water flowing from it
into
the pool. How interesting!

I think animals without hands have different minds from animals with hands. Animals with hands that they can use to pick things up—like monkeys, humans, birds, mice, rats—tend to like being busy, and tinkering with things. Animals without hands, like snakes, or fish, or cats, are happy doing nothing for long periods. I’d always been a thoughtful person. As a fish, I completely shared the daydreamer-animal attitude to life. I had spent hours thinking about the real seawater, and what that must mean. Wondering about pipes and pumps. Having ideas about passages and tunnels in volcanic rock, like the passage we’d used to get into the hidden valley. Pondering on Dr. Franklin’s plans.

I hadn’t felt as if the problem was urgent. My meaning-of-the-seawater ideas had drifted without any pressure, weaving in and out of other long, dreamy thoughts.

Now, looking at the sluice cover, my mind suddenly speeded up. Fresh seawater was being pumped up from the ocean, and flowing through my pool. That wasn’t so strange. Dr. Franklin was very rich, and he’d told us he’d been planning to create a human fish as one of his first human transgenics. The pool had to be in this hidden valley, so he’d had to have a big pumping system installed, possibly using natural passages in the rock. Could those passages now become an escape route for me? If I could get out to the open sea, that meant we both had a chance to escape. We’d have to deal with the stun ring on Miranda’s leg, and we’d still be monsters. But there would be a
chance
for us to get away from here, together, when it had seemed there was none.

But why would Dr. Franklin leave an open door like that? Or as good as open. There must be some catch. He’d made sure Miranda couldn’t really escape, before he opened the aviary. Maybe that was because he thought
she
was still human, but that I was a dumb animal, and I wouldn’t think of escaping.

I looked at the cover from every angle. I felt it all over with my mouth, and brushed it with the tips of my wings; I gave it a soft, underwater slap with my tail. The hinges were recessed into the turquoise-painted concrete. There was a lip on the other side from the hinges, flush with the wall. It didn’t seem to be locked or fastened in any way. The water pushing against it was enough to keep it closed. If I could get some part of myself under that lip, I could easily heave it open. But I had no hands, no beak, and no teeth in my plankton-filtering mouth.

My tail wasn’t any use. I
badly
wanted a pair of hands or some kind of levering tool. Or a big, strong beak, or gripping tentacles . . . Or else I needed Miranda. If she could get down here, she’d’ve had it open at once, with her beak or her feet. I’d watched her, over the days we’d spent in this enclosure. A bird is definitely the busy kind of animal. She was always picking things up in one foot and investigating them, or tearing them apart with her beak—flowers, seed cases, sticks, leaves.

Unfortunately, Miranda wasn’t built for diving.

So that answered my question. The sluice cover wasn’t an open door if there was no way a fish could open it. I studied it, and felt it with my mouth again. I tried to slip the edge of a wing under the lip, which didn’t work. Then I accidentally went off into a dream about tunnels, and pipes, and pumping machinery. Pipes going around corners, water pouring down a deep shaft, the whooshing, splooshing noises that I could hear down there in the dark . . .

The hands thing worried me. I was afraid Miranda had a much better chance of staying human than I did. Unless we escaped soon, I would be the weak link again. I’d go off into one of my long, fish-mind dreams, “fall by the wayside” and become simply a weird animal, like Dr. Franklin said. Then we’d both be trapped forever, because I was sure Miranda would never leave me, even if she got the chance.

I decided I needed to talk to her.

I “called,” flipping the mental switches that should put us in contact.

She wasn’t in the enclosure. She spent a lot of time flying free. Sometimes when she was out there, I couldn’t reach her on radio telepathy. I’d call her up and get nothing but a blank feeling, sort of like the “no network coverage” message on the screen of a mobile phone. Either there were parts of the valley that were out of range, or Miranda had somehow switched off the telepathy phone. I tried not to worry when this happened.

I was getting “no coverage” now.

Miranda!
I called again.
Come in, Miranda!

Suddenly her presence was there, with a feeling like a flurry of wings—

“Yeah, Semi? What is it?”

“Oh, nothing much,” I said, trying to make it casual. “I want to ask you about something interesting, that’s all. When you get back.”

“On my way!”

I was lonely when she wasn’t around, but I was very glad for her. I knew she was often desperately bored in the enclosure. (I was never bored. Manta rays don’t get bored.) I looked forward to her reports too. But it was a real problem, not being able to trust the radio telepathy. I knew she was doing a lot of exploring, but she could never tell me if she’d found out anything that mattered to us.

What mattered to us, of course, was the hope of escape.

Apart from the time he’d come to put the ring on Miranda’s leg, Dr. Franklin hadn’t been back. He’d said nothing about us being the future of the human race that second time. He hadn’t shown any sign of fear either. While the orderlies were opening the roof, he’d “talked” to us the way people talk to their pets.
What a good bird
you are, Miranda, letting us put the tag on so nicely: very
good, well done, here’s some extra fruit for you. Hello,
Semi, are you being a good fish, aren’t you lucky to have
such a nice pool? Aren’t you two lucky to have this lovely
cage? Are you eating up your plankton, Semi?

Sickening.

We didn’t know what to make of this.

Obviously he couldn’t talk to us as if we were human when the orderlies were about. He didn’t want them to know what he’d done with the two girl castaways. They were supposed to think we were no different from the other animals that had been twisted and changed; new additions to the freak zoo. But he could have come back alone. Since we’d been put into this enclosure there’d been no IQ testing, no taking of blood samples, no buttons for us to push, no mazes for us to try and solve: nothing. Maybe Dr. Skinner and Dr. Franklin were watching us on video, but if they were, we hadn’t been able to find the cameras. Either they were staying away from us as part of the experiment, or else they really didn’t know that we were still human inside.

If Dr. Franklin didn’t know that we were still human in our minds, if he’d decided that “the animal traits were too strong,” that meant he’d been telling the truth about our radio telepathy being private. We should have been glad about that. If he wasn’t listening when we were talking to each other, that should mean we had a better chance of escaping. But we didn’t feel glad. We weren’t sensible about Dr. Franklin. He had been our god. He had created us. We still felt that crazy kidnap-victim respect for him, the same as we’d felt through the weeks when he’d been torturing us with his “treatment.” It was mad, but when I thought he’d given up on us, it was as if my dad had rejected me, thrown me out of the house and told me I was no good. I knew it was the same for Miranda, only worse. She’d always been his favorite.

The only thing that made us think the experiment wasn’t over was the way both of us could
feel
someone eavesdropping on our radio-telepathy conversations.

We were used to assuming that everything we did was watched, everything we said might be heard. This was different. It was
strange.
It was like the feeling you have when someone has walked into the room behind you. You’ve heard nothing: but you know before you look around that there’s somebody there. It was like the feeling you might have on a crowded bus, when you know someone is staring at you. You look around, and some stranger quickly looks away. . . . Only stronger than either of those. We had no proof, but we were convinced that someone was “there.”

We’d managed to tell each other about the eavesdropper without spelling it out in words. We couldn’t talk freely on radio telepathy, or in the white place, but our animal selves could communicate. Animals can discuss things, sort of, even if one of them is a ray fish and the other is a bird. You can do it by closing your eyes or opening them wide. By staring, by the way you move or the way you stand.

Or by the way you swim, in my case.

I didn’t like being near the bottom. My fish mind was like a bird’s mind in reverse in some ways. I didn’t care about the surface of the water being a boundary I couldn’t cross: that was natural. I wanted the freedom of the ocean beneath me, not the sky above. If I’d given way to panic, I wouldn’t have been trying to leap out onto the dry ground. I’d have been beating myself to death against that hateful turquoise floor.

But I stayed there, rippling my wing tips, thinking, measuring.

I was wondering,
How foldable am I?

I was on the surface when Miranda returned. She came swooping down and landed near me on the pool’s rim, with a thump and a bounce that made my water rumble. She spread her glossy wings and preened a little, looking at me significantly.

In my mind, I heard her human voice say,
Semi,
come to the white place.

I wasn’t very keen on the white place. I liked going there for the notch ceremony, but otherwise I preferred
not
to be reminded of my human body. I didn’t want to be thinking about what I’d lost all the time. I wanted to be happy being Semi-the-fish. Besides, all that white stuff made me think of cartoon pictures of angels in heaven, sitting on clouds.

It felt like being dead.

I swam about and splashed the water with my tail, saying:
Do we have to?

Miranda gave a loud caw, and flapped her great wings, saying:
Trust me!

So we flipped those mental switches and we were there, in the white cloud.

Miranda stood with her arms folded. She was looking excited.

“Did you have a good flight?”

“I’ll tell you all about it. But what was it you wanted to ask me?”

I noticed that the eavesdropper feeling was very strong. Either it was getting stronger all the time, or I was getting able to notice it more. It was horribly frustrating. I wanted to know what was making Miranda look so excited. I wanted to tell her about the sluice covers and the pumped seawater. The fact that I might have a chance to get out changed everything. I’d have to think of some way to tell her in code. Back in our sham hotel suite we’d learned to disguise what we were talking about whenever we had anything to say that might be about an escape plan. But I’d always been hopeless at it. I’m a nerd. I do straightforward information. I don’t do “hints.”

“Well, I found out something interesting. Miranda, do you know how far it is to the east coast from here?”

Like Semi-the-fish, Miranda-the-bird was good at judging distances. “It’s what humans call two kilometers fifty, on the ground. The quickest way is by the footpath that leads from the gate in the fence. Where Dr. Skinner was going to let us out, you remember. I can see where that path comes out on the east shore, when I’m up high. It’s fun going right up high.” She wasn’t supposed to soar above the crater rim, but she did it. She’d got away with it so far.

“That’s
interesting
! What about the distance to the north coast? And the south?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“I wish you could find out. It’s my new hobby,” I explained. “Did you know, measurements can be very
interesting
. Like, for instance, how far is my pool above sea level? If you could stretch a piece of string, from my pool to the sea, through the rock, how long would that be? It’d be interesting to know. I like measuring interesting things, you know I do.”

If there was a pipeline running through a tunnel to the sea, I thought the inlet/outlet had to be on the east shore. If there’d been anything like that on our beach, we’d have found it; and we knew, from Miranda’s dodgy high-flying trips, that the north and south ends of the island were trees and swamp, right down into the ocean.