A Cage of Butterflies

by Brian Caswell

  I opened it. There were two computer sheets inside. And a disc.

  The first page was a list of five names, arranged on a spreadsheet with columns headed: Address, Date of Birth, Hospital, and some other codes which would obviously have meant something to Richard. The only thing that jumped out at me was the fact that all five had been born within a few months of each other, at the same hospital. It was only later, when I went to work for Larsen, that I recognised those five names. They were the names of the Babies we had in the complex at the farm: Myriam, the Matheson twins – Ian and Rachael – Pep, and little Ricardo.

  The list on the second sheet was longer: twelve names, each followed by a similar string of columns – but eight of the names had pencil lines drawn through them, and a cross beside them in the lefthand margin, while to the right a makeshift column had been scribbled in, headed Cause of Death and, beside each pencilled-out entry, the word unknown. The four remaining names were marked with pink hi-lighter.

  I closed the folder.

  “Don’t show L.”

  “L.” … Larsen. It could only be him. For some reason, Richard had decided to keep the mysterious contents of this file a secret from his boss. I wondered why.

  I guess it was about then that I first got the idea of going to work for Larsen. Perhaps I thought it might make me feel a little closer to Richard. His memory. But I think it was more that I was intrigued. Rich hadn’t trusted the man, and I wanted to know why. I wanted to find out more about the kids on those lists, and why eight of them were apparently dead – from causes “unknown”.

  I found out all right. And by the time it was finished, I’d found out a lot more into the bargain … about the Babies, and about myself.

  Larsen didn’t take too much convincing, especially as I delivered most of Richard’s notes to him when I went for the interview. I kept the red folder at home, along with photocopies of all the other papers; I figured that was the way Rich would have wanted it.

  You could see the relief in Larsen’s eyes. He had a lot of the notes on file, but some of the later research had been incinerated in Richard’s accident; I don’t think he was aware that copies even existed. That, coupled with the fact that they could use me as a resident psychologist – and the fact that I was Richard’s sister – secured me a job at the farm.

  That’s what the kids called the Institute. “The farm”. Before long, because I felt far closer to them than I did to most of the research staff, I began to see a lot of things from their point of view.

  There were two distinct projects running at the farm when I arrived at the end of ’89.

  December, it was. A stinking hot week, with no sea breeze to relieve the humidity. I’d driven down from Sydney, three-and-a-half hours in a car with a defunct air-conditioner and an immovable window on the driver’s side. I was drenched in sweat and desperate for a shower, but true to form, MacIntyre, who met me in Larsen’s absence, launched straight into the “guided tour”. It was typical of the obsession that Larsen engendered in his whole team. I’d seen the evidence in my brother’s behaviour, even though a large amount of the research Rich did was centred in Sydney. At the farm, it was so much more intense.

  In Larsen’s defence, I’m sure that he believed he was right in what he was doing. At least in the beginning. It doesn’t make it right, but it does explain a lot. And I don’t think that most of the research staff realised the full implications of their work. He controlled the projects on a “need to know” basis, soan individual researcher would never find out how his or her work fitted in to the thrust of the project as a whole. It took some personality to sell that situation to a group as bright and naturally inquisitive as the staff at the Institute; Larsen, whatever you thought of him, had a powerful personality.

  Still, he hadn’t brain-washed Richard, and he wasn’t going to do it to me. I went there with my eyes and ears wide open. Even so, without the help of those amazing kids I don’t think I’d have learned too much.

  For one thing, I’d underestimated Larsen’s intelligence – and MacIntyre’s. For another, I never dreamed that the Babies would prove so different. No one did.

  But I didn’t meet the Babies right away.

  The first kids I met were from the “Adolescent Advanced Learning Project” – or, as the kids themselves called it, “the think-tank”. Four girls, three boys, all with IQs of 150-plus, but with very little else in common. Greg once claimed that they were “as different as calcium-carbonate and Camembert”.

  That was typical of Greg. He loved playing word-games almost as much as he loved mind-games. He was no more capable of saying “chalk and cheese” than he was of saying “hello” without turning it into a battle of wills. Mikki – her real name is Michele, but no one except Greg ever called her that; I don’t think she’d even have answered to it – was the only one, Larsen included, who could consistently control Greg. But she did have certain biological imperatives in her favour. Hormones can be a powerful weapon.

  I really loved those kids. Right from the start. Raw talent, intelligent, creative, but strangely naive in so many ways. And they had this incredible group identity.

  From the moment I arrived, it was obvious I was being checked out. And it wasn’t too subtle. Greg and Mikki went straight into this unscripted double-act. Tricky questions to see how much I knew; calculated actions to see how authoritarian I might be. Greg even tried his patented “stare”, leaning forward on his crutches, watching my reaction. But I was up to that one. I looked straight down at his legs, then I held his gaze.

  “And what happened to your legs, Greg?” I delivered the question with what I hoped was a friendly smile.

  There was a momentary flicker of hesitation. Then he smiled back. “Ask God. I was born this way.” Then, after a pause. “Would you like a Coke?” And that was it. Test over.

  I guess I passed. The atmosphere warmed up and the rest of the group joined in the welcome. That was typical of how things worked in the “think-tank” too. Greg and Mikki were the natural leaders. No one voted them in, it was just accepted; as if they knew instinctively what was good for the group as a whole. Like a big brother and sister, they looked after the others with a mixture of bullying and TLC in roughly equal proportions.

  Not that they were really any older than the others. They just understood, and the others respected that understanding. And Greg and Mikki were a team. As incompatible as they appeared at first glance, they complemented each other as perfectly as any couple I’ve ever met.

  Mikki was beautiful. Not in any pretty, adolescent sense – the type of beauty that fades to plainness sometime in the twenties, and remains only as a memory in high school photographs. She was really beautiful. Small and dark, with high cheekbones and huge liquid-brown eyes that sparked with intelligence – and a self-confidence that was somehow much older than her fifteen years. And she didn’t just walk, she glided, with an untutored grace and poise, a dancer’s elegance.

  So different to Greg.

  He was taller, even if he didn’t appear to be, hunched awkwardly over those crutches of his. He had less then ten per cent mobility in his legs – a neurological disorder he was born with – but somehow, once you got to know him, it was hard even to consider it a disability. It may have slowed him down physically, but nothing came close to slowing him down mentally. His mind was razor-sharp, lightning-quick; he was passionately interested in everything. He could follow all but the most abstract of Gretel’s mathematical meanderings, read close to a hundred pages an hour with excellent recall, and he possessed an amazing general knowledge.

  One of the most disturbing experiences I had in all my time with the “think-tank” was playing Trivial Pursuit with Mikki and Greg. It was over in less than fifteen minutes, and in that time, between the two of them, I got to answer maybe three questions. Up until then it had always been my favourite game.

  Each of the kids in the tank had unique qualities, and I loved them all, but Greg and Mikki were special
.

  I’d been there almost two months before I was taken into the second complex and introduced to the other project. The real focus of Larsen’s obsession. The one that almost destroyed so much.

  Towards the end of February 1990, I finally met the Babies …

  VI

  The Other Side of the Glass

  February 24, 1990

  “The other two arrived about ten days ago …” MacIntyre was running a plastic card through the electronic lock. He punched in a code and the door clicked open. As he returned the card to his wallet, he motioned Susan inside.

  The inner sanctum, she thought. I’ve finally made it.

  MacIntyre was still talking. “That makes five of them.” He paused, searching for the correct words. “They all … appear to be severely autistic, but as you will see there are some marked departures from typical autistic behaviours. We need to work out what is going on inside their minds. That will be your job. You will have access to all the observational data and, of course, your brother’s research, but you will be spending most of the time in here with them. We need an expert eye … and you’re it.” Again, he struggled for the right words. “We believe … that the Babies may be highly intelligent. Though of course, having no way of communicating with them, we can only guess.”

  They passed down a narrow, high-ceilinged corridor, and stopped outside one of a number of identical wooden doors. MacIntyre turned the handle and led her into a tiny observation booth. Four padded office chairs stood before an empty desk, facing a window which stretched the full width of the wall and gave an unobstructed view into a huge, sparsely furnished room. To the left of the window, on a swivel mounting, she noticed a large video-camcorder. And on the back wall of the booth three TV monitors.

  “The window is one-way glass.” MacIntyre, in tour-guide mode, was detailing the finer points of the complex. “We can observe the Babies – and record them” – he nodded towards the video – “without their being aware of us. There are two fixed remote cameras, so that we can picked up any movement in the room. Hidden mikes pick up any sound, and feed it directly onto the video. We can hear a mosquito sneeze in that room.” His tone was childishly proud.

  “Very high-tech!” Susan struggled to sound impressed. “But is it really necessary? I mean, they’re just five little kids, not a ring of desperate Russian spies.”

  MacIntyre turned on her, a strange, obsessive light in his eyes. “They are not just anything, Susan.” The way he said her name put her teeth on edge. “We call them the Babies because they look so much younger than they are. But they aren’t babies. And we’re pretty sure they aren’t autistic at all …” For a moment he paused as if he had said too much. “But you’ll make your own assessment. That’s what you’re here for. The cameras allow us to capture every movement. We think it’s important.” He sounded almost offended, and Susan made a mental note to avoid criticism of anything inside the complex – at least for a while. There was still so much to learn.

  They stopped talking as the door opened into the room beyond the glass, and Erik led two of the Babies, a boy and a girl, towards the long table in the centre. A moment later another little girl trailed in, taking a seat at the far end of the table and looking directly at the window. Susan knew that inside the room, the one-way glass would appear as a long mirror filling most of the wall; that she and MacIntyre were invisible to anyone on the other side; yet for an uncomfortable moment, she could swear that the little girl was looking straight at her. Then Erik returned with the two remaining Babies and the girl looked away. But Susan could feel the power of that look like a physical presence in her chest.

  * * *

  March 2, 1990. 2 am

  Just one week, and she was hooked.

  Outside, the moon had set, but the sky was alight with stars. There were no clouds in sight, and this far from the city there was no smog-haze to dull their brilliance. Except on overcast days, any pollution that drifted south from Sydney or the industrial centres of the Illawarra was blown inland or dispersed by the brisk, on-shore breezes, born in the southern oceans, sweeping upthe coastline from Bass Strait and the Tasman.

  Susan stared through the glass at the countless points of light, but only a small corner of her mind absorbed their cold beauty. She was thinking about the Babies. There was a disturbing quality, a power in their passive isolation, that reminded her of the one-way glass of the observation-booth.

  Unapproachable. Inscrutable. Sometimes, she had the creepy feeling that they could see out, see right into her deepest soul, but she couldn’t get in. Each little face was like a barrier, a mirror which reflected her own failure. Her own frustrations.

  Yet she loved them, and that was the really strange thing. It was difficult, nearly impossible, to maintain a professional detachment. They were vulnerable; in need of protection. Threatened …

  Where did these feelings come from? Not from the Babies themselves, surely? They remained behind that invisible wall, looking out, unaffected by the incessant observation, the growing files of data; by Larsen’s obsession. Untouched and unreactive.

  Perhaps it was something inside herself. A kind of professional blindspot. Something that responded to them at an instinctive, non-rational level. She remembered something Erik had said —

  “They are special. I can’t explain it. It’s like a warm feeling I get when I’m in the room with any of them. I guess … you could call it love. They can’t give. They just sit there in that little world of theirs, as if I’m not even there, and yet … I can’t help it. I want to be the one to break through. They’re … important. I can’t forget them when I leave the complex. I want to protect them …”

  I can’t help it … I want to protect them.

  Susan stood up and slid her feet into the slippers on the floor by the bed.

  Erik’s words had echoed the same feeling she was struggling with herself. None of the other staff had mentioned such feelings aloud, but she had seen a telling look on one or two of the faces captured on the videos she had reviewed. Even Larsen, cold as he invariably was, had given them the pet-name which everyone now used. “The Babies”. Had they touched a chord even in him?

  She moved to the kitchenette, switched on the electric jug, and looked at the clock on the wall above the bench.

  Two-fifteen. Great way to spend a night!

  Crossing to the desk, she picked up one of the files. It was labelled RICARDO MUNOZ (26/9/82)

  Inside was a sheaf of maybe fifty or sixty sheets: observational data, most of it repetitious; but Susan was concentrating on the first two sheets. The background summary, which she had read already more times than she cared to remember. It was the summary which Richard had prepared not long before he died.

  D.O.B. 26 September 1982 (Eastgarden Maternity Hosp.)

  Medical History. Full immunisation programme. No unusual symptoms pre-1985. Normal childhood illnesses (measles, chicken-pox). Normal physical, motor, social and verbal development.

  6 May 1985. Severe febrile convulsions – no apparent cause. Hospitalised, Westmead Hospital. Fever controlled. Discharged 8 May.

  May-August 1985. Apparent onset of autism. Little reaction to physical stimuli. (See attached report from Dr Lytton, Paediatrician) …

  And on it went. You could pick up the file of any one of the Babies and the pattern was identical. A perfectly normal child, who some time in the third year of its existence developed a life-threatening fever. All five had survived the ordeal, but had emerged from it different. Cut off from their families, their world. The Babies.

  The files showed that they developed physically at a rate far slower than other children; that their body-temperature was between one and three degrees below normal; that even their heart-rate was slower – as if their whole metabolism had slowed to a crawl.

  But their minds.

  Somewhere, buried among the files and observations in each of the folders, were the EEG readings, the long sheets of grid paper, with a series of lin
es, traced by moving pens, which measured the electrical activity inside a subject’s brain. It was here that the real difference lay.

  If the Babies’ slow physical development was remarkable, their level of brain activity was phenomenal. Impulses raced across the paper, patterns she had never seen in all her training at the university or in the hospitals. Or in any of the research which had filled her every waking moment for the last week. Their brains simply didn’t function like everybody else’s. It seemed that none of the normal rules applied.

  What could have caused it?

  A bubbling, rattling sound dragged her attention towards the kitchenette. The jug was boiling, had been for a couple of minutes, spewing steam and scalding water across the laminate surface and onto the floor. Susan flicked the switch and the commotion ceased.

  As she mopped up the water with the kitchen sponge, as she prepared herself a large mug of coffee, the question repeated itself in her mind.

  What could have caused it?

  Five Babies. All born around the same time in the same hospital. Why …?

  She placed the mug on the desk next to the phone. And remembered. A phone call. Richard, disturbed and angry.

  “… I’m sure it’s not autism, and if my guess is correct” – the words echoed again as clearly as thought – “some drug company’s going to be ducking for cover before this is all over …”

  He was talking to Larsen. He was angry with Larsen.

  “Don’ show L.”

  Maybe there was a clue in that red folder. Something Richard wanted hidden from Larsen’s obsession. Something … crucial.

  Susan sipped her coffee and stared at the pre-dawn dark, at the pinpoint stars. And decided.

  She left early the next morning, muttering something to Larsen about “checking some research”. To her own ears it sounded quite lame, but Larsen didn’t question it. He wouldn’t. It was his style to let “his people” have their head, follow their impulses. It was his way of getting the best out of them.