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.
“I’d say we’re about two hundred and fifty meters above the sea here,” said Miranda. “The rim of the cone is much higher, of course. I haven’t thought about how high, but I will if you like. I don’t mind collecting measurements for you. But don’t get too interested, Semi. You know that if I fly above the crater rim too often I’ll get zapped.”
She pointed to her ankle. I saw a black rubber bracelet around it, like the ring on her bird leg. We saw the stun ring like this, although otherwise we looked like the castaways we used to be. I suppose it appeared in the mental world because it was a sign that we were prisoners, something we thought about a lot. The word interesting was code for anything to do with escape plans. We’d agreed on this ages ago, back in the fake hotel room. Miranda was warning me not to use it too much. She was much better at hinting and talking in riddles than I was.
I could see she hadn’t the slightest idea what I was trying to say. I decided to be more direct, and simply tell her about the sluice. I could say it was a nice way to get a massage. I could say it was fun to sit down there where the water came pumping in, through a big pipe, straight from the sea—
Miranda had other ideas. “I’m happy to talk about measurements,” she said, her eyes very bright. “But I’d like it better if we could play a game. Do you want to play a game that I’ve thought up? Sort of a personality game?”
“Okay.” I wondered what she was up to.
“Good, because I hate being boring. Like poor old Arnie. He was so boring, wasn’t he?”
That took me by surprise. Neither of us had spoken about our fellow castaway for a long time.
“Arnie? What’s he got to do with anything?”
We knew, from the evidence we’d found, that Arnie had found the way to the secret valley nearly a month before we’d stumbled into it. We also knew he’d been caught. I was certain that he’d been treated the same way we had been, but he’d died, instead of being turned into a monster. That was why Dr. Franklin had told us we were his “first human subjects.” Not that he’d have worried about frightening us, but it wouldn’t have fitted well into his boasting lecture, the day we arrived—to admit he’d already tried and failed to create a transgenic human.
“I don’t know,” said Miranda, staring at me hard. “I don’t know what to think. But I know that if we are angry or shocked or upset we turn up here, without meaning to. That’s the way it happened the first time, remember? Visible. Alive and kicking. It might not work, but it’s worth trying.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Arnie. That prize dork, Arnie Pullman.”
“I don’t get it, Miranda.” I was afraid she was going crazy. “Arnie’s dead.”
“Oh, is he? Then let’s see if we can raise his ghost. The two of us, summoning him as hard and nas
ty as we can, that ought to do it. I think I found out something,Semi.”
I couldn’t believe what she was telling me, but I got the idea, and I went along with it.
“Arnie?” I groaned. “Do I have to talk about stupid annoying porky dorky Arnie?”
Miranda grinned. She knew I’d got the message. “Yes, that slobby creep Arnie.”
We both laughed, as unkindly as we could. In the white place, where emotions were all stripped naked, the effect was hateful. Miranda’s face looked like an evil Halloween mask. I was almost scared . . . but then I forgot about being scared because something began to happen. The sense that there was someone with us gave a jump in strength. The vague presence took shape. It was familiar. I could recognize it—
My mouth dropped open. Miranda nodded fiercely.
“He was most boring of all about that raft,” I said. “He loved it as if it was his baby.”
“Oh yecch, the raft!” laughed Miranda, instantly following me. “That idiotic raft!”
“It was pathetic. You’d have thought he was building a space shuttle—”
“Instead of something that wouldn’t have floated across a kiddies’ paddling pool.”
“He thought it was so wonderful. It was falling apart, because he couldn’t tie knots.”
“All the poles were different lengths—”
“And he hadn’t smoothed them off, so it was all lumpy and gappy—”
The cloudy whiteness of the mind place quivered with outrage. “Yeah,” said Miranda vindictively. “The fat creep wasted our twine. And he thought he deserved extra food, because he was ‘working’ so hard. . . . Do you remember when he took the bananas?”
I rolled my eyes. “That was so utterly pathetic and sad. Taking our best food, eating it all himself and then lying about it! As if it could have been anybody else!”
“I did not take the bananas! The ants took them.”
The voice came from nowhere. We both gasped and grinned.