Fifty Fifty

by S. L. Powell

  ‘This weekend. Probably.’

  ‘So you’ll be coming skating on Saturday, then?’

  ‘Uh – I don’t think I can, actually,’ said Gil.

  ‘Oh. What a surprise.’

  ‘My dad wants me to go into work with him on Saturday.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘It’s true!’

  ‘That’s the kind of excuse girls come up with,’ said Louis, spluttering with anger. ‘It’s like, “Sorry, I can’t see you tonight, I’m washing my hair.” You’re pathetic. Why haven’t you got the guts to tell me you don’t want to go skating any more? At least then I could ask someone else.’

  ‘Fine. Ask someone else. Do you really think I care?’

  Gil stared Louis down. Louis’ face was so furious it was almost funny. On one of his hands the fingers were twitching as if he might even be thinking of throwing a punch. Just try it, thought Gil. Louis was such a wimp he’d be able to hold him off just by blowing on him.

  ‘God, you’re unbelievable,’ said Louis finally. ‘When it all goes wrong, don’t expect me to help you get out of it, that’s all.’

  ‘When what goes wrong?’

  ‘Whatever it is you’ve got sucked into. It’s bloody obvious there’s something going on. Are you dealing drugs or something?’

  ‘Why, do you want me to get you some?’ said Gil. ‘What do you want? Weed? Crack, maybe?’

  There was a long silence. Gil just waited.

  ‘Oh, forget it,’ said Louis. He shrugged and walked quickly away.

  Result, thought Gil. Maybe he’d even shaken Louis off for good. He needed Louis less than ever. Jude was his friend now. And Jude thought he was a hero.

  ‘Nearly there,’ said Dad. The car purred along the road past the Natural History Museum. ‘In fact we could stop here and walk, if it weren’t for that little lot.’ He nodded his head forwards.

  A short way down the road Gil could see a group of people on the pavement. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘Animal rights protesters, of course. They’ve got a more or less permanent presence opposite our building. They’re not allowed to demonstrate right outside the entrance any more because there were several scuffles with our staff and the police moved them on. But they didn’t go far, as you can see, and there’s not much we can do about it. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons I drive to work.’

  Gil looked up at Dad’s building as they drew closer. He had imagined it as a blank prison, but the reality was confusingly different. The walls were made of yellow stone, soft and expensive-looking, and there were two sets of curving steps leading up to a huge smoked glass entrance. It looked more like a hotel.

  ‘What would the protesters do if they saw us walk in there?’

  ‘They’d shout at us, or throw things, perhaps. Eggs and tomatoes are popular missiles. It’s more of a nuisance than anything, to be honest, although the shouting can get —’

  There was a terrific crack, as if something had suddenly snapped inside the car, and Gil jumped in terror. The seatbelt pulled sharply across his shoulder and he felt the hidden camera dig into his chest.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Dad calmly. He didn’t either slow down or speed up. ‘That was predictable.’

  Yellow slime slid down Gil’s side of the windscreen. One of the demonstrators had thrown an egg. Gil listened to the shock echoing through his body and was finally forced to admit to himself that he was terrified.

  All morning he’d made himself concentrate on the preparations. He’d retrieved the school shirt from the drawer under the bed where he’d stuffed it on Friday so they didn’t all end up in the wash. He’d removed the button as Jude suggested and cut a small hole to let the camera lens through. He’d dressed and undressed several times, trying on different T-shirts to see which one hid the wires best, and different trousers to see which ones had the biggest pockets. He’d taped the wires to his skin with thick black carpet tape stolen from the shed. He’d even made an extra hole through the back of the trouser pocket so the lead from the camera was completely invisible. Then he’d posed like a girl in front of the mirror, sticking his chest out to see if there was a bulge that gave the camera away, and patting his body to check that none of the wires sprang out. He’d had his desk wedged against the bedroom door the whole time just in case Mum or Dad tried to come in, though neither of them did.

  As he’d followed Dad from the house to the car, Gil had congratulated himself for being so cool, calm and professional. And now suddenly he was rigid with fear. Belly-gripping, heart-hammering fear. What the hell was he doing? How exactly did he think he was going to get away with this?

  Dad glanced at Gil. ‘That frightened you, didn’t it?’ he said sympathetically. ‘There was a time when it frightened me too, but I’m afraid I’m used to it by now. You can see why I didn’t want you getting involved with those people.’

  The car turned a corner and drove slowly down a narrow road between high buildings. There was an electronic barrier across the road. Dad slipped a card into a slot, the barrier rose silently, and they crept through into a car park.

  ‘Here we are, then,’ said Dad, getting out of the car and stretching.

  Gil’s hand shook as he opened the car door. Dad seemed so relaxed. It really didn’t sound as if he suspected anything, so maybe that meant Gil could pull this off after all. But as Gil followed Dad away from the car he spotted a security guard walking around the edge of the car park with a big Alsatian pulling at the lead, and immediately he felt his stomach gurgling unhappily. Then he realised he still had his hoodie on. Crap. If he pressed the record button now, all he would do was film the inside of his clothes.

  ‘Sorry, Dad,’ said Gil. ‘I need to take this off. I’m a bit hot.’

  ‘Leave it in the car if you like,’ said Dad. He opened the passenger door again, and then began to mop the egg off the windscreen with a tissue.

  Gil pulled the hoodie over his head with hands that didn’t seem to work properly. When he finally wriggled out of it, he saw Dad looking at him in astonishment.

  Oh my God, thought Gil. I’ve ripped the wires out. He can see the camera. He can see everything. But before the panic had time to take hold of him Dad gave a wide smile.

  ‘Good grief, Gil,’ he said. ‘You look a bit smart for a Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, well, I thought I’d better make an effort . . .’ Gil mumbled. He fiddled with the fake button on his school shirt. He couldn’t get rid of the impression that it was buzzing, bleeping, flashing out a message loud and clear. Hey! I’m fake! I’m a camera lens pretending to be a button! Look at me! Then he slipped a hand into his pocket and pressed ‘record’ before he could think any more about what he was doing.

  ‘It’s a shame we’re not going in at the front,’ said Dad. ‘It’s such an impressive building. But this entrance is much safer, and it means we can avoid some of the more extreme security measures.’

  He didn’t say what they were. Gil wondered if Jude had been right about the body scanner. It didn’t help his nerves much.

  The back door was just an ordinary-looking metal door, like the back of a fire exit. It took two keys to unlock it. The door opened outwards, Gil stepped in behind Dad, and the door swung shut again with a clunk.

  They were in.

  Where were the animals? Gil strained his ears, half-expecting to pick up their cries of distress through the thick walls. But the building was huge. They could be anywhere, even underground.

  Dad paused and glanced at the wall beside him. Gil glanced after him, and saw a panel with a keypad and several small lights. Dad checked it briefly, then turned and double-locked the back door behind them.

  A little way up the corridor was a door which Dad opened with a third key. Once they’d both gone through he locked it behind him again. There was yet another door beyond that, and here Dad pulled something out of his pocket and hung it round his neck. Gil recognised it as the pendant that he’d found in the drawer in Dad’s study. Dad leant for
wards and put the silver disc against a pad that was next to the door. The door whirred open automatically.

  ‘You’ve got a lot of doors,’ Gil said.

  ‘We need them,’ said Dad. ‘To keep out the egg-throwers.’

  At the end of the short corridor was a flight of stairs leading upwards. Dad took the steps two at a time, humming under his breath. The stairs went round and round for ages. Gil panted after Dad, worrying again. What if the camera wasn’t working, or there was something blocking the lens?

  ‘Haven’t you got any lifts in this building?’ puffed Gil as he got to the top.

  ‘Good Lord, I never use the lift,’ said Dad cheerfully. ‘They’re terribly bad for you. Using the stairs keeps you fit.’

  ‘Is there a toilet somewhere?’

  Dad nodded towards a door, which for once wasn’t secured in some way.

  Was it likely they’d have CCTV in the toilets?

  Gil went into a cubicle and fiddled with his clothes for a while. Then he went out and looked in a mirror. Nothing seemed out of place. He would just have to hope.

  Forget the camera, forget the camera, Gil told himself over and over again as he stared in the mirror. Be natural. Be yourself. Relax.

  Relax-relax-relax-relax-relax, thundered his heart.

  As Gil came out of the toilet he found Dad leaning against a wall, still singing softly to himself. He was already sick with anxiety, and this glimpse of Dad unnerved him completely. Here was Dad looking utterly at home, as if home was really a prison and this was the place where he felt set free. Who are you? thought Gil. He barely recognised this Dad. He was like someone Gil had met only in passing.

  ‘So first of all I thought I’d show you a bit of the new work I’m doing,’ said Dad, setting off down the corridor so fast that Gil had to trot to keep up.

  There were two more doors that Dad opened with the pendant, and then they entered a room that seemed entirely white and silver. It gleamed like the inside of a spaceship. There were no windows, but the lights were white-hot. There was no one else there, and Gil couldn’t see any animals either.

  ‘This is where I make mice,’ Dad announced.

  ‘You make them?’ Gil was so surprised he briefly forgot his worries about the camera.

  Dad laughed. ‘It’s not as science fiction as it sounds,’ he said. ‘We use IVF techniques, that’s all. You know about IVF, don’t you?’

  ‘Um – you mean making babies artificially in test tubes?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. We harvest eggs from female mice and sperm from male mice, and then we make mice embryos here under the microscope.’ He pointed at a big white cabinet with a glass front.

  ‘But Dad, why do you have to make mice? Why don’t you just let the mice have babies normally?’ Gil was aware he was beginning to sound like the voice-over in a nature documentary, but Dad didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘Well, we do, usually. But sometimes we want to try something new, and with IVF we can control so many things. We can engineer mice with specific features to help us in our research. Look. I’ll show you.’

  Dad bounded across the room and slipped on a white doctor’s coat that was folded over the back of a chair. Then he washed his hands quickly at a sink in the corner, and pulled a thick pair of gloves out of a drawer. He went to a big silver door that ran from the floor almost up to the ceiling and pressed down a lever-shaped handle. A curl of something that looked like steam sneaked out of the opening and dropped to the floor.

  ‘This is the freezer where we keep eggs, sperm and embryos until we’re ready to use them,’ said Dad, pulling out a small round dish and shutting the door immediately. ‘What we do, inside that cabinet, is to pick up a single egg with a pipette, and inject it with a single sperm using a fine syringe. It’s difficult and time-consuming because the eggs and sperm are so tiny – but, if it works, you’ve got an embryo.’

  Dad stood cupping the tiny dish carefully in his clumsy gloves, his hair flopping over his face, his eyes shining as he looked at Gil.

  ‘Gil,’ he said, ‘have you any idea at all how extraordinary life is? How utterly astonishing it is to see a creature build itself from virtually nothing?’

  ‘I’ve never really thought about it,’ said Gil, trying to keep his voice ordinary. Dad looked as excited as a boy who’s found a really spectacular bug in the playground, and it made Gil feel old. He stood watching Dad, filming him, concentrating on keeping still and keeping his distance so that the picture would be as clear and steady as possible.

  ‘When the sperm fuses with the egg you have a single cell. And after a few hours the cell divides. And then those two cells divide again, and again, until you have a tiny ball of eight cells. The embryo’s still microscopically small, just a speck. But that ball of cells . . .’ Dad stopped for a moment, breathing fast with excitement. ‘It contains all the information you need to build a mouse. Can you imagine that? It’s like putting eight bricks in a field, and watching them slowly turn themselves into a house . . .’

  Dad was fizzing with so much energy that Gil almost thought he could see him glowing. It was just like the day when they’d gone to see the fossilised fish at the museum. Gil tried to remember when he had last felt that excited about anything, but it seemed years ago. Then he noticed that Dad had stopped, waiting for him to say something.

  ‘Wow,’ said Gil. Even he could hear that it didn’t sound very convincing.

  A flash of irritation crossed Dad’s face. ‘Look, do you want to know what I do or not?’ he said. ‘It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to set this visit up. The least you can do is show a bit of interest.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad. I am interested, really. Just go on.’

  Dad looked at Gil, frowning slightly, and Gil put his hands behind his back to stop the urge to fiddle with the fake button on his shirt.

  ‘So what do you think I do this for?’ Dad said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why do I go to all this trouble? As you pointed out, it’s an awful lot easier to let the mice get on with making their own babies.’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Gil.

  ‘Do you know what transgenic means?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘If a creature is transgenic it means it contains genes from a different kind of organism. So the mice we make here —’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ Gil interrupted. ‘I’ve heard about this. I heard they’ve made a strawberry with a fish gene spliced into it.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dad had started to fiddle with the big microscope cabinet, and he didn’t sound remotely bothered.

  ‘Isn’t that really dangerous?’

  ‘No, of course not. Putting a single fish gene into a strawberry doesn’t turn it into a fish. It doesn’t even make it half fish. Look, think about a toaster and a car. They’re both made of largely the same materials, aren’t they, although they’re entirely different? So if you used part of the car to mend the toaster – a bit of wire, say, or a nut and bolt – it wouldn’t turn the toaster into a vehicle, would it? It’d still be a toaster. It’s exactly the same with living things. They all have remarkably similar DNA, and much of it is interchangeable.’

  ‘Oh,’ Gil said. But in his head he had a picture of a big flabby flatfish-shaped strawberry with slimy eyes, and he couldn’t get rid of it. He stood and waited for Dad to finish whatever it was he was doing with the glass cabinet. It took ages, and slowly the fear in his stomach transformed itself into impatience. Here he was, wasting valuable battery time filming Dad doing something completely irrelevant. For God’s sake hurry up, he said silently.

  ‘Here,’ said Dad. ‘Look.’ He stepped away from the microscope cabinet and waved Gil forwards.

  When Gil put his eyes to the microscope he had to blink a bit before he could bring anything into focus. Then he saw it. A clump of little spheres like frogspawn, just like the pictures in Dad’s secret photo album. It was impossible to tell how big the spheres were, and for a second Gil h
ad the bizarre feeling that he was gazing through a telescope rather than a microscope, and that the spheres were as big as stars spinning across the galaxy.

  ‘What is this thing?’ said Gil.

  ‘It’s a mouse embryo. I’ve introduced a sequence of human DNA that will give this mouse a genetic disease.’The words hummed in Gil’s ear. ‘The next step is to put the embryo back into a female mouse and let her grow it for me.’

  ‘But you said it’s got a disease.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dad’s voice was calm. ‘I guess you don’t like the thought of that, do you?’

  ‘What kind of disease?’

  ‘Well, in this case, a peculiarly dreadful genetic condition that gradually destroys the brain.’

  ‘What?’ Gil jerked away from the microscope, genuinely revolted. ‘That’s horrible. So you’re going to let this mouse grow until its brain just disintegrates? How can you do that deliberately to a mouse?’

  ‘It’s far more horrible for people than it is for mice, I can tell you that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because the mice we make don’t know that they’re ill. Mice can’t think about themselves in the way that people do. And we don’t let them suffer physically. As soon as they become unable to do the basic things that make mice happy, we put them out of their misery. But human beings who have this disease have to live for years with the knowledge that their brain cells are slowly and irreversibly choking to death. Every single day they have to face the fact that they will end up unable to do anything at all for themselves, even think. It takes an unbearably long time. It destroys lives, Gil. It destroys whole families. Because it’s a genetic disease, you see, so parents often pass it on to their children.’

  Dad was quiet. All his excitement had evaporated. Gil stepped down from the microscope, and Dad bent over it again. He was there for a long time, while Gil hopped impatiently from foot to foot and fretted about the camera battery.

  ‘Sorry,’ Dad said at last, straightening up. ‘I was miles away. Do you want another look?’

  ‘No, I want to go and see the animals. Especially the ones you’ve given diseases to.’