The Administration Series (137 page)

They walked in silence between artificial rocks planted up with ferns. Then the path opened out, and Warrick hung back to let Toreth go first.

The cage wasn't small. Some of the space was an illusion created by painted walls and artfully arranged plants and stone, but there was plenty of open space, tall wooden frames with platforms, and a rugged fake cliff. Thick glass separated the enclosure from the viewing area, with a polite notice on the screen beside the glass requesting visitors to stay back behind a makeshift tape barrier.

'Visitors' currently meant only them, for which Warrick was grateful. Other people would have spoiled the moment.

"There," he said, although there was no need. The solitary occupant was in plain view.

The panther paced across the front of the cage immediately behind the glass. Not the whole width — barely a third of it, in fact. She had worn a path in the grass, turning each time at precisely the same spot, moving with a tightly contained energy that he found painful to watch.

Prowling — that was the word traditionally linked to big cats. She should have prowled, but she didn't. Warrick had spent a long time in front of the cage when he'd been here with Dillian, trying to work out why the word felt so wrong, and eventually decided that prowling implies an interest in the world around. The panther showed no awareness of anything beyond her endless turn and return.

Unlike many of the other cages, there was no sense of being watched back. It was possible to map many things onto the flat, yellow eyes — restlessness, rage, boredom, despair, madness, a desperate determination never to surrender to stillness and death — but nothing that touched the viewer, nothing that connected to anything outside the animal's own mind.

She was in beautiful condition, coat glossy, muscles flowing under her skin as she moved and turned, moved and turned. That only made it worse, that such a healthy specimen could be so sick.

The simile was obvious, and had occurred to him almost immediately he'd first seen her. He'd been thinking it over for a while when Dilly had turned to him and said in a low voice, "You know who it reminds me of, don't you?"

The remark had surprised him. These days Dilly never mentioned Toreth unless it was absolutely required. There had been no question as to who she meant, though. He'd nodded, and they'd left it at that.

Just as he'd done with Dilly, they stood and watched the panther in silence for a long time.

"Why's it doing that?" Toreth asked eventually.

"She came from somewhere where she was kept in a very small cage, with insufficient stimulation. The repetitive behaviour is called stereotyping. A stress-reducing response, or so I understand."

"So why is it
still
doing it?"

"Probably because she hasn't noticed yet that things have changed."

"God, no wonder they're extinct in the wild if they were all that stupid."

"It's not a question of intelligence. It was all she'd ever experienced, according to the exhibit entry." He offered his hand screen to Toreth, but he was still watching the panther. "She arrived at the other place as a young cub, and after that she was always kept alone in the same cage."

Without meaning to, he switched into his lecture voice. "Normal brain and central nervous system development depends on the proper kinds of environmental stimulation. When a stimulus is present, the developing nervous system reacts to it, learns from it and is shaped by it. There was nothing she wanted in the world around her, and no unpredictable events that required a reaction, so eventually she ceased to respond to it."

"Yeah, sounds vaguely familiar. I think it came up in a psychology course." Toreth glanced round. "How come you know so much about it?"

"I read a little of the field for some of the early sim work. We were interested in the possible side effects of feeding artificial stimuli into the brain."

When he stopped, Toreth prompted, "And?"

"And nothing. The consensus of available research was that any stimulus was equally well received, and that any small abnormalities created were quickly corrected by re-exposure to the normal world. Our initial results supported that and we dropped the project. A pity, because it's an interesting subject, but we had commercial considerations. I think one of the university groups at the AERC still works on it."

"So why aren't the new stimuli correcting
that
?" Toreth ducked under the tape and walked right up to the glass, following the panther along the cage.

"Her stereotyping is very deeply ingrained. Our work was with adults — the nervous system is developed by then, and changes are largely limited to relatively minor remodelling. The damage was done to her during early development, and was then heavily reinforced for a number of years."

"So it's going to be like this forever?" The panther turned and Toreth turned with her, perfectly in time and barely less graceful.

"They hope not. They've had other animals arrive in a similar condition, and most of them can be coaxed out of it eventually. Helped to learn new behaviours. It's likely to take a long time, though. Months at least. Perhaps years before she's anything like normal."

"Why's it staying just there?"

"I don't know for certain. Possibly she paced at the front of the old cage, where she could see the most, and so she's doing the same here. If you look, the track is where the light from out here is strongest. I don't imagine there's much choice involved in the activity — it's a reflex, that's all. A compulsion, rather."

Toreth stopped pacing and crouched down, palm pressed against the glass. The panther moved away from him, unheeding. "Poor fucking thing."

It was virtually the only time Warrick could remember him expressing sympathy for anything, animal or human.

Still crouched, Toreth turned away from the glass towards him, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. "Warrick, why did you want me to see it?"

"I thought you might be interested, that's all."

"No." He stood up. "No, that wasn't it, was it?"

"Yes, it was. Partly." He didn't carry on, waiting for Toreth to ask.

"Come here," Toreth said after a moment.

Warrick joined him beyond the barrier, without hesitation. Toreth took his arm, turned him to face the glass just a few inches away. The panther paced by, gaze fixed inwards, blind to the freedom around her.

Toreth moved to stand behind him, hands on his shoulders. The position triggered some reflexes of Warrick's own.

"What do you think about it?" Toreth asked.

Under Toreth's hands, Warrick's skin tingled, sensitised by the current of danger in Toreth's voice. "I think . . . that she's very beautiful. One of the most beautiful things I've ever seen."

In the thick glass he caught Toreth's reflection from over his shoulder, but couldn't read his expression.

"You feel sorry for it, don't you?" Toreth asked.

"Yes."

"More fool you. I'll tell you something — if you went in there with it, I bet it'd stop stereotyping pretty fucking sharpish." His hands slid up, circling Warrick's neck loosely. "It'd tear your fucking throat out."

Warrick forced his shoulders to relax. "Yes, I expect it would."

"That'd teach you not to feel sorry for things that don't fucking need it."

"Briefly, yes. Not a lesson you could really learn from, though."

Toreth didn't laugh. "No, it wouldn't be."

"You called her a poor fucking thing," Warrick said after a moment.

"So I was wrong. There you go — I don't say that very often, so enjoy it."

The hands released him, and the reflection dimmed as Toreth stepped back. He thought that was it, but Toreth spoke again.

"You brought me here because you wanted a comparison, didn't you? To see us next to each other?" The question caught Warrick as much by surprise as Dillian's had. Even though Toreth had obviously guessed, Warrick had never imagined that he'd say anything directly about it.

"Yes," he admitted.

"Well? What's the conclusion?" Shadows moved in the glass as Toreth pointed to the enclosure. "That thing — is that what you see, when you look at me?"

Warrick hesitated as the panther passed him once more, trapped in the strange comfort of her invisible cage. He considered lying, but that would be more dangerous than the truth if Toreth had the slightest doubt.

He turned to look at Toreth, meeting his expectant gaze. "Occasionally, yes."

Toreth smiled, as predatory as anything they'd seen during the day, but without the reassurance of a barrier between them. He reached out slowly, giving Warrick plenty of time to react, pulled him forwards, and kissed him hard. One hand pressed between Warrick's shoulders, the other slid up his chest to rest lightly, casually, around his throat. Fear sharpened the arousal until he was panting into Toreth's mouth. He heard female voices coming up the path towards them but for once he didn't care that they were doing this in public.

A sudden silence followed by a nervous giggle indicated that they'd been seen. Toreth held the kiss for a few more seconds, slowly tightening his grip around Warrick's throat, then released him and stepped back.

"Then more fool you, again." Toreth ducked smoothly under the tape and walked away without another word, back towards the flamingos.

Ignoring the women, Warrick went to sit on one of the benches scooped out the artificial rock at the back of the viewing area. He waited until his heart had stopped pounding — not until some time after the group had moved on — and then took the exit path away from the panther. It felt as if something had changed, or ought to have changed, but when he glanced back he saw the panther pacing away from him as if nothing had happened.

Which, for her, was true.

To his surprise, Toreth had stopped at the flamingo pool to wait for him; he was sitting on the wall and watching the birds. When Warrick came up, he glanced round and smiled briefly, the aura of danger gone.

Warrick sat on the wall beside him and said, "I'm sorry." Open-ended enough that Toreth could accept it or ignore it, as he chose.

"It doesn't matter." Toreth shrugged. "If you're going to drag me all the way here to compare me to some bloody animal, at least it was something flattering. Better than a fucking tapir."

"Actually, I like the tapirs."

"How about the flamingos?" Toreth asked, then carried on without waiting for an answer, his voice distant and dispassionate. "We went on holiday once. Somewhere sunny. It was . . . okay, actually, as far as I remember. Or at least it wasn't unbearably fucking awful. I usually counted down the days until we went home, because at least there it wasn't like being trapped in a fucking cage with them twenty-four hours a day." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Anyway, the hotel had flamingos in the grounds. Only time I'd seen any. I liked them — I got up early every morning to go have a look at them. I suppose it's the kind of thing you do when you're however old I was."

Toreth gestured vaguely at the birds. "I thought they were bigger than that, but then I thought: you always do, don't you?"

Warrick stared at him, stuck for a reply. A several-sentence reference to Toreth's family was quite unprecedented. The only responses that came to mind were flippant or sympathetic, neither of which would be well received.

Toreth looked at him briefly, reading his reaction, then stood up and turned away.

"Come on. Let's go — I'm bored."

Toreth leaned back in the low seat and sipped his drink, looking round the club with a proprietorial air. So far, things were going very well. He'd organised Sara's ten-year service party personally, as per section tradition, so it had
better
go well. Or rather, he'd overseen the organisation. In consultation with the General Criminal admins, he'd decided on the entertainment for later and then he'd delegated the venue, the food and all the other dull parts of the evening to Chevril's admin, Kel.

Tillotson had, very sportingly, come up with a donation from some budget somewhere and Kel had managed to book the club for the evening at a discount. The reputation attached to the I&I name could come in handy. Consequently, the tickets had been cheap and there was a gratifyingly large crowd. The majority of people from their section had turned out, and quite a few from elsewhere. Sara, naturally, was having the time of her life. Her only complaint, repeated several times, was how
old
it made her feel.

She had a point. The idea that she'd been working for him for ten years made Toreth feel pretty fucking old, too. He remembered her arriving . . . well, no, actually he didn't. But he remembered that he'd had a completely useless admin, and then suddenly a very good one. Junior paras, when they had them at all, were generally given the most junior admins, but even fresh out of training she'd been ten times better than whatever-his-name-was had been. Plenty of people had tried to poach her over the years, and he was very glad that she'd stayed. His job would be hell without her.

Ten years. That meant he'd been twenty-five at the time. Four years before he'd become a senior, and seven years before he'd met Warrick. Measured out like that, it seemed to have gone past frighteningly quickly.

He finished his drink and shook the glass, rattling the ice. Had he really known Warrick for three years? God, now that made him feel old. Not to mention disconcertingly like . . . half of something. It was still strange, reading an invitation and knowing that there was an 'and guest'. There hadn't been an invitation for this, of course, so he hadn't thought of it before now. No big deal, anyway.

Thinking about Warrick, he automatically checked to see where he was. There were very few occasions on which Warrick could be persuaded to have anything at all to do with I&I. However, this time he'd agreed with only a token show of reluctance. He'd even bought Sara a present. Toreth hadn't seen it yet, but an inordinate amount of giggling had accompanied her opening it, so Warrick's sense of humour had obviously had an outing.