Monster Lake (13 page)

It didn’t take her long to get to the town
library; it was just a short walk. The air-conditioning momentarily
chilled her when she entered the narrow-windowed, gray-brick
building. It didn’t look like many people were here right now,
probably because it was still pretty early. Mr. Seymour, the
librarian, said hello to her when she passed by the check-out desk.
Terri returned the greeting and went on her way. One of the
library’s wings, called the Natural Science Wing, was devoted
completely to science, zoology, and biology books, and this was
definitely where she’d be able to find out more about the words
she’d found in her uncle’s briefcase. She walked directly to the
wing, but then stopped in her tracks.

“
Oh, you’ve got to be
kidding me,” she moaned out loud.

The wing’s doors were locked, and there was
a sign which read: WE ARE SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE BUT THE
NATURAL SCIENCE WING IS CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. THE WING WILL
REOPEN IN TWO WEEKS.

Terri couldn’t believe her luck—it just got
worse and worse, didn’t it?

I can’t wait two
weeks!
she thought. She had to find these
things out now. Mumbling to herself, she walked back to the
check-out desk. Maybe Mr. Seymour could help her.

“
Excuse me, Mr. Seymour,”
she asked. “But I need to know about these words, and the Natural
Science wing is closed.”

Mr. Seymour was sort of
tubby, and he was always reading poetry books behind the desk. He
was nice to all the town kids, and he always went out of his way to
help people out with their school assignments or whatever they
needed to look up. He wore glasses and had long brown hair in front
that sometimes hung in his eyes. “Yeah, I’m afraid so, Terri,” he
said. “Each year we have one section of the library repainted and
recarpeted, and this year, the Natural Science section was on the
list. They always do it late in the summer because that’s when we
have the fewest people in.” He leaned over the desk, pushed his
glasses up on his nose, and took the piece of paper from her.
“Hmmm, what have we got here?” he said and began reading the words
on the paper. His forehead seemed to crunch up as he read. Then he
said, “Well, these are some mighty sophisticated words for a
twelve-year-old. Do you know what
genetics
are?”

“
Not really,” Terri
answered. “Just that it has something to do with genes, and all
living cells have these things in them called genes.”

“
Right,” Mr. Seymour
agreed. “Genes are like little codes in our cells which give us the
special traits that make each person different. And animals and
plants too. For instance, a tomato has different genes than a
banana, and you have different genes from me.”

“
Because you’re a man and
I’m a girl?” Terri figured.

“
Exactly, and because of
lots of other things too. Like because you have blue eyes and I
have brown, and I wear glasses and you don’t. And today there’s a
special science called
genetics
, which involves changing the
way genes are arranged in living cells.”

“
Changing,” Terri said,
“like that one word there,
mutation.
That means change, doesn’t
it?”

“
Right again,” Mr. Seymour
said. “And this word here,
transmission,
refers to how this
mutation, or change, is transferred from one type of cell to
another.”

Hmmm,
Terri thought. “Can genetics change how big things
get?”

“
Why, sure, and that’s why
genetics are good for the world. Today, genetic scientists can
change all kinds of genes, so farmers can grow rice that’s more
nutritious, they can grow wheat that grows faster in different
climates, they can grow bigger ears of corn, bigger heads of
lettuce, things like that, so that food is cheaper and more
plentiful. There are a lot of countries in the world where people
don’t have as much to eat as we do, and it’s the science of
genetics that will help those poorer countries.”

This sounded like a truly great thing to
Terri, helping feed poorer countries that didn’t have as much food
as America. She’d seen commercials on TV advertizing for charity
money for a lot of these poor countries, to help feed kids that
didn’t have any food to eat, or running water, or medicine when
they got sick. Or anything, for that matter.

Mr. Seymour went on, “And not only will we
have more food to give to people who don’t have enough to eat,
genetic scientists can make better seeds too, so people in
countries with less food can grown their own vegetables. See, some
countries can’t grow many vegetables because they don’t have good
soil, or enough water, but now, with genetically changed seeds,
they’ll be able to grow vegetables that don’t need as much water or
fertilizer, and vegetables that can grow in different kinds of
soil. Plus, all these vegetables grow better and bigger.”

“
What about bigger
animals?” Terri asked the next logical question.

“
Well, sure, the same goes
for livestock, too, like cows and chickens. With genetics, we can
grow cows and chickens that are bigger and healthier and more
resistant to disease.”

But, of course, this wasn’t what Terri
meant. “What about other animals. Like…toads? And salamanders?”

Mr. Seymour scratched his chin, and pushed
his glasses back up on his nose because they kept slipping down.
“Well, yes, probably toads and salamanders too. It’s a fairly new
science, but it’s progressed enough that they could probably do
that too. They can probably make any kind of animals bigger by
using special genetic scientific methods.”

Terri leaned over and
pointed to the word
reagent
on her piece of notebook paper. “And would
scientists use reagents to do it?” came her next
question.

Mr. Seymour nodded. “Yes, I
guess they probably could. They could make a special reagent that
could change the genes in a toad or salamander that would make them
bigger, or smaller, or stronger, or…well, just about anything. And
of course, a
counter-reagent,
would be a substance that would reverse the
change, like an antidote.”

More and more, it was
sounding like Terri was right all along.
That’s what Mom and Uncle Chuck have been doing in the
boathouse, doing experiments to make special reagents that make
toads and salamanders bigger, and—

Her thoughts stopped short then.

“
What about carnivores?”
she asked next. “A carnivore is an animal that eats meat, right?
And has…teeth?”

Again, Mr. Seymour nodded.
“It sure is. You seem to know an awful lot about this kind of
stuff, Terri. See, there are four different kinds of animals. But
remember, most of them have teeth. Carnivores, as you already know,
eat only meat.
Herbivores
are like rabbits, animals that only eat plants and
vegetables. Then there are
omnivores,
animals that eat both meat
and vegetables. Human beings are omnivores. And—”

“
Insectivores,” Terri cut
in, “are animals that only eat insects, right?”

“
Right, just like, well…”
Mr. Seymour’s forehead wrinkled up again. “Just like toads and
salamanders,” he said.

««—»»

Terri’s excitement carried her back home
like a rocket.

She
knew!

Now she knew
exactly
what was going
on!

Experiments!
she realized. There could be no other answer. Her
mother and Uncle Chuck had invented a reagent that could change the
genes of toads and salamanders, make them bigger, and make them
carnivores—with teeth! Yes, Terri was excited about finding this
out, but she had to admit it was a scary sort of excitement. She
knew what was going on, yes, but there was still one thing
she
didn’t
know.

Why?
Why
were they doing these
experiments?

For what reason?
she wondered, still running along as fast as her
sneakered feet could carry her. This question bothered her. It
didn’t seem right, to change toads and salamanders into things that
they weren’t. Obviously, as Mr. Seymour had told her, there were a
lot of good things that genetics could do for the world, like
making bigger vegetables and livestock so poor people had more to
eat. But—

Toads?
she wondered.
Salamanders?

Terri just couldn’t figure it.

But I’ll find out,
she told herself.

When she got back home she wasn’t surprised
to find the house empty; her mother and uncle were obviously still
down at the boathouse and probably would remain there till
dinnertime, if not longer. By now, Terri realized she had only one
course of action.

I’ll have to confront Mom
and Uncle Chuck,
she knew.
I’ll have to tell them that I know what they’ve
been doing down there, and then they’ll have no choice but to tell
me why.

This was a daring move; Terri knew they
might get very mad at her for snooping in their business, but what
else could she do?

I’ll have to go down to
the boathouse,
she thought.
I’ll have to go down there right now and get to
the bottom of this.

Boldly, then, Terri went out the sliding
door and marched across the back yard. Yes, she fully remembered
that she was forbidden to ever go down to the boathouse but, again,
she knew she had no choice. She stepped onto the gravel path
between the trees and began to descend.

She
had
to know why. Her curiosity
wouldn’t let go of her, and it was just a moment later when her
questions actually began to scare her.

What reason can there be
to do what they’re doing?
she asked
herself, marching on over the gravel trail.
Why make toads and salamanders bigger, and give them
teeth?

It almost
seemed…
evil.

It almost seemed as though her mother and
Uncle Chuck were doing evil experiments on the toads and
salamanders to turn them into—

Into…monsters,
she thought with a sudden and very creepy
chill.

Like the toad she’d dreamed about last
night. Huge. As big as a car. And with giant fangs…

Monsters,
she thought again.

Suddenly the path seemed darker and more
narrow. The sunlight barely filtered at all through the branches of
the trees overhead. She began to get scared; she began to think
that she was being watched, not by people but by toads.

By giant toads with fangs…

But Terri knew this was only her
imagination, so she forced herself to go on and continue down the
path. Eventually, a great glare of sunlight shimmered across her
eyes—the lake.

Terri stopped at the front of the pier. The
door to the boathouse was closed, but one of the side windows stood
open, and she could hear voices.

Her mother, and Uncle Chuck—

“
This is terrible, Chuck,”
her mother was saying with anxiety in her voice. “How could this
have happened?”

“
I don’t know,” Terri’s
uncle replied. “Somehow the bottle must’ve fallen off the shelf,
and when it broke, the reagent seeped into the tank beneath the
trapdoor.”

What?
Terri thought. At first she didn’t understand. She’d seen the
tanks on the shelves of the backroom. And she remembered the
trapdoor on the floor, with the padlock on it. But—

Wait a minute,
she thought then.
That’s
what he means. There must be another tank, under the floor, and
they keep it locked shut with the trapdoor.

And this possibility scared her even more.
Because she knew that the trapdoor was big…

So the tank under the
trapdoor must be big too,
she
concluded.
Real big.

Big enough to hold a
really big
toad or
salamander…

But the rest she didn’t understand. What
were they talking about?

What? One of the bottles of reagent
broke?

Terri’s heart was fluttering. More and more
it seemed she was right. But there was only one way to find out for
sure.

I’m going in there right
now,
she determined herself.
And I’m going to ask them…

But just as she was about to step forward
and approach the boathouse door, she heard—

“
Pssssssssst!”

Terri spun around. But she didn’t see
anything except the trees. And what was that sound? It sounded like
someone whispering.

Then she heard it again:

“
Pssssssst! Over
here!”

And that’s when Terri noticed the figure
standing in the shadows, looking at her.

««—»»

The dark figure waved at her. “Psssssssst!
Terri! Over here! It’s me, Patricia!”

Patricia?
Terri thought. What would she be doing down here?
And why was she standing in the shadows?

Terri walked quickly up the path, to see her
friend, but then Patricia held her hand up. “Stop! Don’t come any
closer!”