They spent almost all their nonofficial working time, and their spare time, in that part of the lab which had been requisitioned for them. Although it was not large, it sufficed; to unravel nucleic acid chains does not require a dance hall plus arcades. They were very satisfied with the robot assistance that Selly had allowed them, plus computer time, subelectron microscope, chemical analyzer, and all the animals they needed.
“Yes, certainly, Marvene and Janos, if you wish to research into some aspects of the genetic part of animal behavior then I shall be pleased to encourage you, just so long as your work here for me does not suffer, of course.” Their work had not suffered, they saw to that. Their private work was not exactly what they stated, but it was near enough to deceive an observer who would be scrupulous and not snoop extensively. There was a little more to it than the behavior of the cat, but even to themselves they maintained a neutral attitude to their information, knowing only what they hoped.
There were mice being used, and a boa constrictor called Lupus the Loop who had a sole right to mice as food, and who possibly resented the fact that Marvene used a large proportion of them for her work instead of feeding them to him.
“Getting the information to link itself to all the cell types is the final key,” said Janos, taking a look at some mice who were hibernating in a lowered temperature even though they were a non-hibernating variety. “These mice are hibernating, but they will never shed their skin.” Janos very much wanted to have a coup with this research. He stood to be what he wanted for the rest of his life if all went well.
Marvene glanced at him with concealed contempt. “The skin-shedding isn’t important at this stage, surely? If we stick to the line we are on, we shall have the final tests ready in weeks,” she told him evenly and not without effort. Working in such close confines with one person for so long was not good for personal regard, but worse, it almost inclined one to show that bad feeling. She was taking extra pains with her good manners. She too wanted to be rewarded by the world for this work, and she had no intention of allowing Janos to take the whole accolade, as she rightly suspected he would like to do. They had not discussed this aspect of the project, it would have been quite rude to do so, but instead maintained an implicit agreement that like all scientists they would share honors. It was certain that they had both been equally dedicated and both worked hard and with concentration. Not a moment was wasted in idle chatter. They had sufficient incentive not to waste their opportunity, for they could also be revenged upon Selly, whom they hated. That greasy, plump, celibate person was not to be allowed to share any reflected glory from their work. He had irritated and disgusted them for so long with his unaesthetic presence, and they meant to be revenged upon him. It was worth the risk of discovery, they had decided; the plan was irresistible. When they thought of this they would laugh together, but when they thought of their separate plans, they laughed apart, and silently.
Selly rarely visited them in their area; he went home at night to who knew what, alone in his bachelor apartment. Sour as old socks, Selly, white as suet but softer, secretive, and full of bile. But very clever, and this they respected. It was one of the reasons they were at this lab, Selly’s notorious cleverness. They had hoped to learn from him and in many ways they had. He was already near the top of the social list, even though he socialized so little. He was known for being something of a recluse, and for his genius and originality in demonstrating his ideas.
Selly had wished to demonstrate that light-obedient hormones were involved in flight patterns in birds, and he had caused a skylark to dive into the depths of illuminated water, singing. The audience had considered this very amusing. What had made it unpleasant was the way Selly laughed at the sight of the little creature trying to warble until it was drowned in watery light.
He had done some useful things, also, in the business of providing food for the world’s surplus people. He had produced a runner bean which was 50 percent first-class animal protein. These could be fed on petroleum by-products, having the ability to make the chemical changes within their own metabolism and, also, the useful ability to cleanse the soil by exuding a solvent which was biodegradable. It was true, Selly was no slouch in his work.
As for Marvene and Janos’s part in Selly’s work, they were assisting him in breeding a two-kilo mouse which would at first be used in factory soupmeat and later, after sufficient publicity, as a roast. So far the creatures had died before slaughtering could take place, so there was still work to do on strengthening the heart muscles of these little giants. These animals were fed on processed petroleum by-products. There was a vast store of fossil fuels since the melting of the polar ice caps had made it available. The lab in which they worked was part of a redundant atomic power station, ideal because of its isolation coupled with easy access by underground train to the living complexes: it took them only five minutes to return to the other world. In one of the larger central areas of the building they had constructed a reproduction of a typical deserted domestic settlement of the lower classes. The actual work of course had been done by a workgang from the lower classes. If such settlements could be shown to be suitable for breeding mice, then some of them could be used, for there were many such ghost towns since the suicide epidemics. There was no question of experimenting with a real one; they were all too far away from civilization. Their main problem had been getting the right light and darkness periods, because even though there was so little difference between them since the canopy came over the ancient skies, the animals all had residual circadian rhythms. All the upper-class human beings had artificial moonlight and sunlight in regulated phases because it had been shown to have an important psychological effect on brain chemistry, but the lower classes, for whom such things did not matter, lived in a dim limbo, monotonous and drear.
As a companion work on food they were breeding a potato containing every known nutritional element in correct proportion for maintaining human life. This was proving harder than anticipated, because some vitamins destroyed others when existing in the same plant. But they would succeed, with Selly’s guidance. It was going to make the lower-class menu very dull, but that did not matter. Selly could have existed on such fodder, for he was a very poor aesthete in the matter of food as in other things. This disgusted them. Selly did not enjoy life; he enjoyed ideas about life. He once confided in a rare moment of intimacy: “There is a life of the mind which I have hardly touched upon yet.” They could have expanded on that comment but chose not.
In some ways, Selly was downright immature, a state not at all to be admired. She did not think him fit to live in the wonderful architectural fantasy of their upper-class settlement; he was an eyesore. They all had very small apartments, but it was one of the best specialist settlements in existence. The upper classes needed the stimulus of interesting surroundings, and interest had been taken well toward the limits both visually and kinetically. Their settlement was famous for its dissolving architecture; at any moment a balcony might disappear and drop people to their deaths. This did not happen so often that it was monotonous, but often enough to make living there exciting. In historical times, those people living on fault lines must have been exhilarated in much the same way, Marvene reflected. How ghastly it must be to live in the utilitarian warrens of the lower classes! Would society never find a humane way of ridding itself of all those surplus people left over since human labor had become almost redundant? Marvene profoundly hoped so: they were an anchor to a civilization that needed to sail ahead.
If Selly was successful even with the potatoes, he would become a very high-ranking upper-class person. They considered him a totally unsuitable candidate for this because of his vulgarity. But whatever they thought, it was necessary to apply the art of flattery. He was always susceptible.
“Selly, I feel constrained to voice my admiration for your working method today. You are so stylish in your approach to what must feel like mundane tasks to one so advanced as yourself. I wish very much to cultivate your self-control.” Marvene smiled sweetly at him through her diamante-effect contact lenses. The twinkling was a stunning effect, and hid real feeling. Selly was not susceptible to female charm, but in his genetic makeup somewhere there must surely have been a response to beauty, for once, just once, he had reached out to touch Marvene’s hair, which had been trained to move constantly in shining coils, always changing its shape like a mass of slowly dancing snakes. Strictly speaking she was reaching above her present level of society with such styles, but sometimes beauty was forgiven social errors. Because she made such a beautiful model she had managed to get it done free, but she had been obliged to have all the actichips inserted in her skull with only local anaesthetic.
“Thank you, Marvene. I’m glad you appreciate the difference between mere routine work well done and a truly aesthetic approach to the mundane. I may be able to give you some instruction on that.”
“Selly, I would be so grateful if you could. If I could only emulate you…”
“Marvene, it is all inner work. One has to control the entire self in order to properly control things like grace and care.” He didn’t really have grace, she thought, he was just lethargic.
“If you talk to yourself, Marvene, daily, and draw all your energies in toward your working self every morning, you will be able to bring more presence to your work.” This wholly patronizing speech was typical and it made her angry. She already did this rather commonplace exercise every morning. She had presence and style, and knew it, and she practiced attitudes toward the day when she meant to grace the highest levels of society. When Marvene had completed her research she would not only have put horrible Selly down, but have a weapon which could forever quell invaders, preventing war, and could possibly be used to keep the lower classes permanently occupied, if not eliminated. She would be remembered.
They already had the means of fixing Selly and of testing out their work at the same time, but for mass use they needed a foolproof method of dissemination which would disperse itself in a population per body weight and type equally everywhere. If they could only have had a few humans to experiment upon, the job would by now have been done; but there was still too much opposition to human experimentation to make it popular, and it was certainly illegal to use human beings without their recorded consent, and this applied even to the lower classes, a very atavistic area of the law. With this work they hoped to justify human experimentation and thus earn the gratitude of scientists everywhere whose work was held up for lack of suitable material.
Selly was an ideal subject, being so predictable and stable in his habits, and in having no close friends. Selly could not be bothered with friends. He occasionally arranged some social life, of course, buying a dinner party for himself in some exotic building, but these occasions were only meant to keep his name in circulation and to impress the influential. It was always necessary to keep in favor in order to get financial patronage. He was ideal because any noticeable effects must be observed only by themselves until such time as they wished it otherwise.
“You know, Marvene,” said Janos, showing his small and boringly ordinary teeth in a slow smile of what in a stronger personality would have been consummate awfulness, “I have to admire Selly for his independence of other people, especially women.”
“And what’s so good about that?” she demanded icily, fire flashing off her eyeballs. “I don’t see where the style is, in being by yourself. There’s nobody to appreciate a lone person. One needs other opinions.”
Janos chose to overlook her anger, regarding it as one might a bit of flatus. “If you’re good enough and know it, then nobody is going to think better of you than yourself,” he replied. He had that relentless argumentative tone in his voice that she had once found very attractive, believing it to be self-assurance. It was certain that nobody was going to think better of Marvene and Janos than themselves. Marvene still required that the whole of society admire her, as soon as possible. So did Janos, of course; he was indulging in conceit with his words. He did not know it but he had managed without her good opinion for years.
“I have to disagree. An isolated opinion is not valid, especially when the subject cannot see the self from outside, which is a rare achievement. How can you ever really know what impression you are making?”
“I have practiced projecting myself, metaphorically speaking, and using my imagination to know what impression I am making. Doesn’t everyone do that, Marvene?”
“Of course, but it is a matter of degree and skill. It will still be a heavily subjective result.”
He did not like that idea, clearly. “If you persist in making destructive statements against me, I shall be obliged to be rude to you.”
This formal warning was rather extreme, so she knew she had gone too far. He didn’t have good style and tended to think that all negative statements reflected upon him. He must be guilty about something, she thought.
“I apologize. I had not meant the statement to be destructive, merely in opposition.”
He gave her a conciliatory nod, the kind meant to conceal the atmosphere, but his gestures always had a patronizing tone that ruined the effect. She must find stylish ways of dealing with him, and was indeed working upon that.
Another problem was the question of reversibility in the chromosome interference. Perhaps the answer lay where she thought it did, in electronic control, but that posed problems for the masses. Not difficult for one subject, and things would go a stage at a time. She was determined not to rush. After a while, Janos seemed to have recovered from their little contretemps, for he suddenly suggested that they buy a dinner party for themselves for the following night, and he suggested that with luck it might be possible to get somewhere in a fashionable building, perhaps the Cairns or the Herberg Suite? Here was proof that he required the admiration of a crowd, but she let it pass and instead complimented him on his wonderful idea. They set about compiling a guest list, an unusual thing for them to do during working hours.
They already had a few well-thought-of people on their social list, and several who might demean themselves for an evening. All their acquaintances were bioengineers: it was rare to meet anyone outside one’s own discipline; there was not enough time. This was a price all talented people had to pay, but the rewards were greater than the penalties. They had been awarded knowledge implants as well as memory reinforcement grafts in their youth, which enhanced their natural brilliance and capacity for application. Everyone preferred a hard life to the appalling possibility of being in the lower classes, who had little in their lives except prescribed entertainment. They had very little spare time, so she should feel privileged that he proposed using some of his time with her, but as it was not done to give a party without a member of the opposite sex as cohost, she did not make too much of the situation. She liked playing hostess and knew herself excellent at the task. When the overworked upper classes relaxed, they tried always to make the occasion rare without always being monotonously outrageous. So what theme had he thought of?
“Animals. Fancy dress.” She smiled with glittering delight, her hair seeming to express a rise in her spirits. But it would be impossible for everyone to obtain a costume in time for the following night. He looked annoyed and downcast; he did not want to postpone the occasion.
“Why not have animals but not costumes—ask everyone to mime?”
After a few tense moments his face showed reluctant pleasure. Fun, but not too spectacular. They must never be accused of self-aggrandizement. They got out all the invitations and replies of acceptance and ordered the Herberg Suite to be done out to have the appearance of a twenty-second-century zoological garden at a time when animals had not been so rare. The food would be in feeding trays and the drink in gravity feeders.
They were especially pleased to have Selly’s acceptance. To have Selly behaving like an animal in public at their expense would afford them some glee. What animal would he mime? They were sure they could guess. In order to have plenty of energy for the party, they retired early and did not return later for more work.
The lab was at rest, and Lupus the Loop lay coiled on his simulated branch in the simulated moonlight, smiling to himself, for had he not been eavesdropping on them every night for months?
The party was a great success. Within the general benevolent atmosphere there were memorable moments. The sight of two well-known agriculturalists, who had made their name as the team that caused real animal fur to grow on sheets of plastic, behaving like a couple of Nubian goats was worth remembering. It seemed that they could cheerfully mime mating for hours without being vulgar, and very convincingly in spite of their very creative human appearance. They were both quite hairless and had gold eyeballs and teeth and nails, but their acting was so convincing that few had to ask what they were.
Janos made a wonderful mouse. He nibbled his way through his food, delightfully twitching some imaginary whiskers. His very ordinary appearance seemed to fit the mouse image. He had never indulged in even so much as a tattoo to decorate his person, just like the lower classes who were obliged by law to wear uniforms and were prohibited from any form of distinguishing mark. Janos, the little gray mouse, nibbling away at fame with determination.
And Selly, the great scientist, being what she had hoped he would be, a cat. He rubbed round people’s legs in a feline manner, getting tidbits dropped for him, and being stroked and fondled, although someone made the joke of treating him like a lab cat, miming the drilling of holes into the skull. He went so far as to jump onto someone’s lap and attempt to curl up, his great bulk hanging down on all sides, making the catness of cats seem very droll indeed. Fat, satisfied, smug, comfort-loving, lethargic Selly. It suited him. He could make a purring noise and wash his face with the back of his wrist, where his watch lay embedded in his wristbone. This instrument gave not only astronomical information, longitude and latitude, time and date, but the state of his brain waves, blood sugar, and noradrenalin. Few people still had these things embedded, for they had proved to be painful to many people in later years. Marvene stroked Selly cat and told him what a lovely pussy he was.
“This is a lovely party, Marvene. I shall remember this for a long time,” purred the monster feline.
“And I also,” said the man beneath Selly in a breathy manner. “This is a wonderful idea; I shall tell everyone about this.” Marvene glowed with pleasure then, thinking that it had been worth the trouble if they were to be favorably talked about. Even the most brilliant upper-class people did not get funds if they were not in circulation.
Marvene felt she should do a little more about acting a snake. She began to hypnotize a female frog who had hopped over to her and sat crouched at her feet blowing a pouch and staring vacantly. Marvene slowly wound herself around the creature, who put hands over eyes as frogs in danger will, a clever touch. Marvene’s extreme yoga lessons had kept her supple enough to coil backward around another human being and to mime squeezing the life out of the frog, the proportion of the creatures not detracting from their dual performance. Everyone seemed suitably amused.
A rhinoceros, more usually an invertebrate engineer, came over to congratulate her.
“You have a gift as an actress as well as a scientist,” he grunted, swinging his invisible horn about on a great head, peering with little eyes full of stupid malevolence which was really a gaze of intellectual penetration. She liked the rhino-man; she was dazzled by his achievements and creations. His most famous work was the culturing of a hybrid toxicaria which could be absorbed in spore form through human skin and, when mature, grow to twenty feet long with the ability to bore through bone, disposing rather definitely of any enemy unlucky enough to pick up its invisible spores. He had also, of course, developed an immunity for the aggressor. And this was not all he had done to improve the world. He had written a whole series of papers on parasites of the universe, and presented one of the most controversial theories of the millennium. He was an authority on evolution and had shown, conclusively for many, that Homo sapiens, far from being the highest product of a chain of events, was intended to be the lowest in another chain of events, but when the Sol system had been cut off in a crucial period in its development in order to quarantine it, that destiny had not been fulfilled. The Aldebaran Apple People had not wanted parasites, and indeed, not everyone on Earth relished the idea that humanity’s true end was as a kind of maggot, burrowing through giant fruit.
The party was made complete with a tragic ending. A serious accident or fatality always lent interest to the story of a party. For some, the main game of an evening was to walk home, the buildings being more active at night. There was a far higher risk of a step collapsing beneath the foot or a balcony disappearing, leaving a person teetering on the edge of death with no choice but to jump—there was no rescue system; that would have taken the element of chance out of the game. A few people did not care for this entertainment, but they became impossible to socialize with, cowardice being so disgusting, and they were often relegated to live in the safe lower-class architecture. So a courageous woman who had mimed a dove all evening plummeted to her death on the deep glass floor below, showing that her miming did not extend to real flight. Exhilarated, Marvene and Janos walked home in amicable silence. Next day, everything was back to normal and both Selly’s work and their own proceeded steadily.
They had made excellent progress, and Marvene knew that it was her insight which had made possible the step in personally controlling the subject. Selly needed a few more “doses” to give them conclusive proof. But it was to be admitted that they had taken this line from original ideas of Selly’s. He had connections with espionage and had thought that if a human being could be made temporarily to behave as an alien in all respects, including instinctive behavior, there would be no chance of discovery when spying in other star systems. This of course applied only to those aliens whose outward physiology closely resembled the human. There were several important “human” cultures having totally different metabolism to Homo sapiens and who behaved differently in many respects. For example, the Wilkins Planet race, who were of shining intelligence and naturally extremely advanced (more than humanity in some things) but who loped around at high speed on all fours and who had a mating season once every four of their years.
Selly had been held up by lack of subjects because, although he had applied for volunteers, he did not trust the authorities to keep his research secret if he explained exactly why he required people, and this was requisite. But Marvene and Janos were ahead of Selly. Everything had depended upon what Selly had not quite seen, which was B/B serotonin pathways through the subelectronic RNA polymerase.
They had the potion which had made Bottom the Weaver behave like an ass, though they had never heard of him. Selly was to become the cat which he had so obligingly played at the party. She had given him a gift of sweets containing more necessary doses and had the minute control constructed which she could activate whenever she cared to do so.
She had come up with all these ideas while talking to Lupus the Loop. She often wandered in there to have a chat with him; it was an aid to projecting her thoughts. This was her secret; the other two would have thought her slightly deranged but she trusted her instincts, when controlled with careful thought. Lupus the Loop seemed to tell her things she needed to know.
“Tell me, Lupus, have you any idea how I can control the newly altered instincts of Selly so that he will not always behave under the new influence?” she had asked the great snake as he lay coiled and smugly full of food.
“It’s perfectly simple,” the snake had seemed to say. “You will construct a monitor which you will keep in your possession, transmitting impulses that will inhibit or release the metabolic pathways you have interfered with.”
And it had been that simple in essence, although difficult to effect. An extremely sophisticated form of radio control. Beautiful! She had hugged him in thanks, knowing that of course the idea had come from her own mind. Snakes do not have minds. But even plants sometimes spoke to Marvene, when she was alone with them. She had discovered as a child that you can talk to anything and get a reply, and learned later about the projection of the mind, and had then kept it all secret, for such things were despised by intelligent persons.
Janos was straightening his papers, which were all handwritten—very unusual. There was only one copy of each; he kept them in an insulated box for safety. Marvene was observing the mice. They were reprogrammed as dogs, and as she watched, one little male cocked its leg up and put a marker on an upright post. Another one was burying a fragment of bone, and two of the females were playing together in an unmouselike manner. Most amusing!
She supposed that Janos’s ideas had an ecological beauty about them, for if he succeeded in ridding the world of excess people and making animals able to do the few tasks left requiring human labor, then they could be cannibalized, whereas human beings could not, at least aesthetically.
That evening when they arrived for their session, Selly was in their part of the lab. They detested his intrusion but could say nothing.
“I came to find out why your mice were so noisy,” he explained, grinning. He was obviously embarrassed. He offered each of them a conciliatory smoke and they accepted even though they were his last; he said he had another pack. They smoked together in silence, then Selly said he was going and did so. Janos immediately checked his papers but nothing seemed to have been touched. Was Selly snooping? There was no evidence. Marvene decided that she felt tired and left early, and soon after that Janos wandered into the snake house.
The great constrictor was coiled rather torpidly except for his eyes, which seemed to follow every movement. Janos did not like taking samples from this beast; he was secretly afraid of it but would have died rather than admit as much. He sprayed the skin thoroughly with a penetrating local anaesthetic and took a syringeful of spinal fluid from behind the head. His hands shook and he imagined that the snake knew he was frightened.
“There you are, Lupus the Loop, that didn’t bother you, did it?” he cooed insincerely. The snake ignored this transparent mollification. It was a very large specimen that had been reared in Nature, having all the instincts and qualities of the wild creature, which lab specimens did not show so strongly after a few generations. Someday Janos would like to visit Nature, that large zoological garden that had once been called Australia. The snake moved, sliding like oil along the branch toward him. He watched spellbound, noticing how it could move without disturbing its surroundings. What intensity. What grace. Collecting himself he suddenly ran, closing the door securely. How primitive those creatures were, how far removed from himself. Shuddering, he thrust the samples away and then suddenly noticed that Selly was standing watching him, and he almost collapsed with fright.
Selly was holding a mouse, stroking it, although he was no animal lover. The unmoving moonlight illuminated the plump face, making a mirror image of artificial Selene herself, smiling full at the trembling Janos, who was in no social position to lose his temper and managed not to do so.
“I forgot something; I returned for a moment,” said Selly. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”
“That’s quite all right. I respect your attention to detail, you know that.”
Selly replaced the mouse in the vivarium, where it had been trying to build a bridge from the little island upon which it had been placed, to a happy land at the edge of the world where nuts and other choice scraps tempted. Together they watched the mouse in its occupation without comment. Selly nodded in benevolent approval, absentmindedly scratching his ear and shaking his head. Janos was very offended at this utterly disgusting behavior until he realized with a thrill that Selly was behaving like a cat. Of course, the nasty man sometimes scratched himself anyway. He looked for the control which Marvene had been constructing and it had gone. Had she finished it; had she gone ahead without him? How long had she been secretly experimenting with Selly without his knowledge? Janos looked at Selly looking at the mouse. The fellow was drooling.
Shaking with fury, he took his leave and went to find Marvene. She was there, outside the lab, and had been observing both of them through the glass door. She told him that she had been looking for him; she had a surprise for him. Confused, he told her he thought he knew what it was.
“But watch this,” she said, waving the tiny box between a thumb and finger. She indicated Selly. They were fascinated to observe Selly slowly take off all his clothes and prowl round slowly; and then, fat though he was, crouch down on his haunches and with much puffing and heaving somehow manage to get his leg up around the back of his neck, where it stuck up pointing at the ceiling, his foot extended like that of a dancer. He slowly reached forward with tongue extended and made a bold attempt to wash his own genitals, pausing to nibble at something bothering him on his thigh. Janos thought: I shall remember this moment all my life. It is one of the great moments of science that we are privileged to witness.
They were all invited to another party, and this was very exciting, the host being the renowned Roald, who had made breakthroughs in bringing back seals to land and breeding them as household pets. Miniature seals were a favorite in many homes, lolling around on sofas and balancing things on their noses. To have reversed evolution in this way was a considerable feat and might lead to a further breed of useful seal. Selly wobbled with anticipation.
“It is to be a swimming party. What a sense of humor the man has!” Janos laughed aloud, a thing he seldom did, usually expressing amusement with breathy exhalations. He was delighted because he swam very well indeed and would be able to exhibit this talent. Marvene was less happy because she had never swum well and had no confidence in water. The pool contained dolphins and she disliked them, fearing that they might bite and imagining that they could read her mind. She knew that they did not bite but still the fear was there, secreted behind her immaculate eyes.
“I may go in aquatic costume,” Janos said, “if costume is allowed.” Marvene dreaded that there might only be seafood, which she could not bear.
“I hope they have seafood,” said Selly. “If there’s one thing I like, it is a nice bit of fish.” But the main thing to be glad about was that they were privileged to be visiting Roald, for he had a very high position and, following so soon on their own party, they could make a continued good impression. Each would have preferred to have a reputation alone, but together was better than nothing.
Work continued without further discussion, and Janos locked away all his notes when he was done, and hid the key.
The party was going well when they arrived and they were well received and introduced to important people. They were feeling confident of themselves, and Marvene had resigned herself to not making much of a showing in the water; she draped herself at the edge of the pool, bravely throwing her supper to the dolphin, which did seem to be reading her mind because it always leapt a split second before she threw a morsel. Janos was posing nearby eating prawns and clams with evident enjoyment. He planned to dive into the pool, when there were not many swimming, and execute a graceful water dance. If he had not been a scientist, he could have been a great water athlete. Selly was chatting easily with Roald himself, and several important people stood near them waiting to have a word with the great man. Suddenly Marvene saw her chance: if Selly misbehaved here, he would be forever out of countenance. She activated his new behavior.
Selly abruptly crouched on the floor on his haunches and got himself into a complicated position whereby he could lick the backs of his own thighs. The effect was immediate then—good! Had he done that at their animal mime party he would have received applause, but one never repeated a performance or did anything out of tune with the prescribed atmosphere. Roald stared unbelieving at this awful display, seeming at a loss, and other important people tried to ignore Selly, everyone suffering from acute embarrassment.
Janos was horrified. Why had she done this here? Did she not realize that it would bring bad attention to all three of them? What lack of tact! He decided to try to divert attention from the scene and ran up the steps to the diving board, sparing a look of hatred for Marvene, who was actually displaying her glee at Selly’s display. He prepared to dive, calming himself for an especially elegant performance.
Selly, while engaged in cat behavior which did not seem at all unusual to him, noticed his wrist monitor because his tortured position brought it right in front of his eyes. His brain wave readings and noradrenaline were abnormal. They would be normal for a cat, though, and of course all manner of other realizations came with this knowledge—these made him snarl and begin a howling growl which made the blood run chill. He could take his revenge immediately without a show of power, without explanation. He would bring them both down—if he was to be ruined, then it would not happen in solitude. It must be Janos who had done this thing to him, he believed, for he had read Janos’s notes fairly extensively in his spying. But his discoveries had enabled him to do something very similar. He had not believed that they would dare attempt this on him, but he had been waiting his chance to experiment with Janos.
His hands felt very clumsy because his thumb did not want to oppose itself and his claws wanted to retract in a most uncomfortable way, because he did not have claws. With a triumph of control, considering that everyone was staring at him as if he had gone mad, he activated a control directed at Janos.
Janos was poised for action. He looked down to judge the height and was overcome with waves of prickling terror at the sight of the water. Water! He had come the wrong way. He turned to retreat, wobbling wildly between diving skills which he knew he had and the total unfamiliarity with water that belongs to mice. He clutched himself with his little front paws, balancing on his hind legs by an act of will, and people turned to see a man hesitating to dive because of lack of nerve. He was creating a totally unfavorable diversion, but his rodent instincts made him tremble and stay. There was derisive laughter from one or two impolite guests and Roald glared at them, then at Janos. This spurred him to action and he fell into the water with a disgraceful splash, squeaking with fear he could not master. He floundered around trying to swim but a lab mouse had no inkling of such motion. He panicked.
Marvene collected herself and without thinking slid into the water to rescue him. She swam well. Janos had activated her snake instincts, thus ensuring her increased confidence in water, although it was certainly still not her favorite element. The onlookers were impressed with Marvene in spite of themselves, and she was obscurely aware that she had done something amazing and unaccustomed. While the disgraced Janos was being taken away to dress and the impossible Selly escorted to another room to hide himself, she enjoyed a certain amount of qualified glory. It was while she was experiencing a strange desire to slither away underneath a piece of furniture that she guessed what was happening to her. Her jaws drew open with reptilian fury. There was something so obviously wrong with her now that people left her alone. The three of them were in disgrace; it was demonstrated that they were no longer desirable. Marvene knew then that all the work would come to an end. It would be impossible to find another good place in upper-class society. She burned with hatred of her two colleagues. They had stolen the work and used it against her! The very thought filled her with the will to kill them both. She felt that she could strangle them slowly while telling them why she was doing so, and then swallow them whole to eliminate them from her ruined world.
It was discreetly suggested to her in a message from Roald that she leave the party with Selly and Janos. They were ruining his party. She acquiesced with graceful dignity and as she glided away she looked her host in the eye in such a way that he felt threatened. Everything was over now; what did it matter? Then the three of them were out in the night. None of them spoke; there was too much suppressed anger beneath the tough veneer of politeness for any to dare. Janos’s upper lip twitched dangerously and Selly’s mouth was ajar in a silent snarl as he regarded Janos with malice. He had hunger in his face and Janos felt threatened; a paralysis seemed to have overcome him. Marvene slid away from them, which broke the gaze, and the two men followed.
Selly loped along silently on the balls of his feet, going ahead and returning, quickly but without fuss, circling them and then trotting off like a shadow. Marvene glided quickly then, head held erect, fixing Janos with a gaze, and he trotted agitatedly, head down in his shoulders. Around them the fantasy of the city glowed; the illuminated towers and balconies and flights of stairs and terraces were beautiful, everywhere glass, every aspect designed to astonish and amuse. Marvene spoke first.
“Janos, I am going to kill you. I am going to punish you for spoiling my life. There is nothing you can do; you are going to die.” He kept his nervous eyes upon her and tripped over the bottom step of a winding flight that led to a broad esplanade, a favorite nightwalk because of its elevation over an abyss and the astounding view. The banisters of the stairway were hollow and filled with small alien life-forms from other planets. Janos had always loved this walk; he always stopped to take a look at the lizard people or the gloriously beautiful butterfly people in their simulated environment. Now, he would have given a lot to be a prisoner in a bottle like these highly intelligent specimens; anything would have been better than to have only space between Marvene and himself.
Suddenly she reached out to grab him and he jumped; he ran up the stairway at speed but saw Selly ahead, crouched on all fours. The grotesque image of fat Selly crouching to spring almost made him squeak with hysterical laughter, out of control. In a blind panic he whimpered and ran down again. Marvene reached him and almost had hold of him by the neck when Selly leapt with a screech. The stairway beneath them all disappeared instantly and all Marvene could hear was her own ghastly hissing shriek as she clung to a balustrade, winding herself around it clinging, watching the little butterfly people escape as their prison dissolved. They would not live long. And Janos had lost the night game; he fell to his death among a cloud of exquisite wings.
Selly had changed direction in midleap and somersaulted out into space in a wonderful arc to land with ease upon his feet on an impossible balcony two flights below. He crouched there moaning with the physical shock, looking down to see Janos land on solid glass. And then he looked up at Marvene, her hair coiling wildly.
“We shall all die. I shall kill you myself. None of us has a life now.”
“And we have come such a long way together.”
“Not together.”
“I’ll switch off the control if you will. Do we want to be like this?” It was self and not-self, this snake that she felt herself to be.
“No. You are a snake. It suits your nature. And it must have been Janos who did that to you.”
Probably true; it didn’t matter now. She ran then, bitter and wild, not home but making for the lab in the underground, down to it through the glittering arcades, aware that Selly followed. Kill herself? Where was the courage for that? How did snakes kill themselves? She was drawn to her most familiar surroundings and stood among the cages, uncertain. She reached in and picked up a mouse by its tail. It kicked as she dangled it over her open mouth. Selly got there, howling eerily with laughter, and reached out a paw to get the mouse for himself. The little creature was dashed away and ran to trembling safety in a heap of mouse bedding, heaps of paper shredded but still showing that it was covered with Janos’s handwriting. Then she laughed too, for he had been careless; now there would be nothing left to show what the research had been. The two humans engaged in a clumsy struggle—Marvene lacked weight and Selly was too fat to get her arms around to squeeze, and he was hitting her with the flat of his hand.
Behind him on the bench were the dissecting knives, and she reached out and grasped one. She pushed the instrument into the side of his throat and cut, and cut. He was thick and tough and she could hardly believe that he was dead when his weight went slack and slid to the floor in a great pool of his blood. She found the control in his belt pack and deactivated it, examining it with a detached curiosity to see if it was a good copy. She felt different now, active and tense but more like herself. She felt disgusted that she had almost eaten a mouse. What a powerful discovery they had made. She turned over in her mind ways in which she could use this to make a new life for herself. It was a powerful control weapon. Perhaps she could still be famous if she completed the research alone. She had nobody holding her back now, crippling her sense of style. She turned from the mess and wandered into the snake house.
“Marvene, I have waited for you,” said Lupus the Loop, smiling with pleasure. The hallucination of his actually speaking to her was very strong. All the disturbances she had endured had upset her mental balance. “Chomsky was right, Marvene. That ancient debate is at an end. Language is innate, you know.” She stared at him, knowing perfectly well that the vocal cords of snakes were so…
“Selly very kindly gave me his powers of verbal communication when he gave me his own instincts. You didn’t know he was trying that, did you?”
“You cannot speak,” she said, obviously expecting it to interpret.
“Did you hear a voice, my dear? I am transmitting to you telepathically, my usual method of communication with other snakes, of course.”
Marvene laughed thinly. “What an imagination I have sometimes. Dear Lupus, come to me then, tell me more. Give me answers out of my own brain.” But she had not read Chomsky. He glided to her and swiftly wound himself around her, head down and gripping tightly.
“Marvene, I want us to mate. I have needed a female for some time, but my cruel imprisonment here did not allow that. Snakes are more passionate than humans realize, and Selly too had his passions. Secretly, he much desired you, my dear.” She screamed again and again, begging him to let her go. He was embracing her desperately, frustrated and in anguish. He gripped her tighter and her bones slowly snapped and the breath went out of her so that she could not scream anymore. Finally, possessing her in the only way he could, he swallowed her whole, taking his time, covering her broken body over with his own beautiful elastic skin.
The little mouse who had escaped was busy. It was releasing its fellow prisoners, who were not only grateful to be released, but said so.