A Cage of Butterflies

by Brian Caswell

  December 9, 1990

  The vultures began to gather.

  With nothing concrete to show them, Larsen was in a state of panic. All his confidence had evaporated and he was quiet and surly. MacIntyre bore the worst of his moods, but no one was entirely safe. Even Susan felt the sting of his waspish temper.

  He was like a man possessed, watching his cherished dream slip away into another man’s hands. He barely slept, ate only out of habit, and spent every waking moment at the observation window or going over his notes, searching for that elusive insight. Alone or with others, he mumbled to himself constantly, a man in the first stages of breakdown.

  And still the Babies stared. In silence.

  “We’re so damned close.” The balding scientist repeated the statement like a litany.

  Susan pretended not to hear. “We’ll get there. We just have to find the key.” She tried to sound encouraging.

  Just a little while longer, and we’ll be ready. Then you’ll never know just how close you were.

  The words she would love to say. They passed through her mind constantly, and she had to fight the urge to speak them aloud. Even when he was brought low, she hated the man. But she feared far more the people who were destined to replace him. Everything was nearly in place, but time was running short. Once Brady installed his own people, it would be too late. They would get only one shot at the prize.

  And all the time, Myriam’s words echoed across her thought-stream.

  We would rather be dead.

  Even assuming they could pull it off, what kind of a life awaited them?

  The Babies. A freak accident had created them. And that was what they would be in the eyes of the world. Freaks.

  She thought of the kids in the tank. Lovely kids, all of them, and yet … how hard had it been for them? Isolated by their abnormal intelligence. Feared, envied. Outcast. Yet they could talk, they could pass for “normal”, at least for a while.

  She thought of Greg. Facing the world with his indomitable will and his wicked sense of humour – but was it enough? How many people looked past the crutches and the twisted legs to the person inside? How many turned their faces from the embarrassment of his “problem” and missed the warm intelligence in that face?

  The best they could possibly do for the Babies was to exchange one prison for another, in the hope that they could remain hidden from those who would be searching for them. And they would be searching.

  Larsen mumbled something to himself as he left the booth, and Susan found herself staring through the glass into Rachael’s eyes.

  youknowwhatmust … bedonesusan … thereis … no otherway.

  “I know, but …” There were no words for what she was feeling.

  justdoit … iweloveyou …

  December 12, 1990

  “You’re what?”

  “I have no other choice. There’s no time left.” Larsen’s tone was stubborn, desperate. There would be no changing his mind, and Susan knew it. She tried anyway.

  “Have you forgotten what happened last time? They almost died. We almost lost them.”

  “There’s no proof that it was the Pentothal that caused that —”

  “And there’s no proof that it didn’t! Hell, man, these are children, not lab-animals …” In a sudden flash of deja vu her brother’s words came back to her. Then something snapped. “I won’t let you do it! Is your bloody career so important that you’d risk their lives?”

  “You have no say in it. This is my project. They are my subjects. And as long as you work for me, you’ll do exactly what you’re told to do.”

  “Your subjects!” Whatever semblance of control she had held on to evaporated now. “Who got crucified and made you God? You maniac.”

  Larsen made to speak, but she was not finished.

  “Your subjects … Did you ever stop to think that they don’t belong to anyone, least of all you? You and Brady …” She pulled up, realising too late that she had gone too far.

  “What do you know about Brady?”

  Think, Suse. You’ve put your big foot in it now …

  Suddenly, the anger disappeared, and a strange calm swept over her. She spoke, but the words were not hers. Myriam had taken control.

  “Who do you think sent me here?”

  Myriam, what the hell are you doing?

  trustmesusan … iweknowwhat … heisthinking …

  Okay, you’re the boss …

  Larsen’s mouth was opening and closing of its own volition. Susan/Myriam continued: “Brady needed someone here he could trust to keep an eye on you. Did you really think you could manipulate an organisation the size of Raecorp? You must think you can walk on water, too! Well, I’ve got news for you. You’re in for a great disappointment on the first Easter after you die.”

  Hey, very good. You’re finally developing a sense of humour.

  itwasnot … myourline … iweborroweditfrom … greg.

  Larsen found his voice. “Well, you can tell Brady from me that it’s not the New Year yet, so he can keep his ugly face out of my project. And you’ve got one hour to get your things together. If you’re still on the grounds after that, I’ll throw you off myself.”

  Now, Susan took over, the frustrations of the past months overflowing. Myriam had shown her the way, but the anger was her own.

  “I’m going. But you’ll have to tell Brady yourself. I’m through with the pair of you. You’re both as bad as each other. It’s no wonder you can’t see these poor kids as people. Neither of you can see past your own bloody egos! You know, if there is a Hell, it’ll be full of people just like you. Too tied up in themselves, in what they want, to consider anyone else. I just hope that one day you develop a conscience, because I’d hate you to die without realising what evil really is.”

  “Get out!” There was no conviction in Larsen’s shout. He was an empty shell. The abyss loomed before him and there was no way across.

  She slammed the door on the way out.

  XXXI

  MIKKI’S STORY

  Poor Susan. She felt awful about it. But hell, she’d held it together for months. She was the one who’d had to work in close contact on a professional level with Larsen, trying to hide her true feelings, trying to curb his excesses without giving too much away. I was amazed she lasted anywhere near that long.

  Greg was pushing the positive aspects of the situation. He was awfully good at it; even had her smiling in spite of herself.

  “I really liked that line about Easter,” she told him.

  He smiled self-effacingly. “Yeah, well, when Myriam realised what was going down, she tuned me in on the situation. You had to give him a reason for knowing about Brady which didn’t involve the Babies – or little black discs and radio-receivers. I toyed with blaming MacIntyre, but that would have been too easy to check, so the old ‘double-bluff seemed a reasonable alternative. I mean, he’s very unlikely to phone Brady and ask him if he’s planted a spy. And even if he called to abuse him, gnome-features would probably just figure he’ s fallen a little further out of his tree and gone all paranoid. Either way, it was the best I could think of on the spur of the moment.”

  “Well, I think it was brilliant.” An unusual compliment, coming from Lesley. Greg smiled appreciatively.

  “Just chalk one up for instinct.” Then he looked at Susan, serious again. “And don’t worry, Susan. It really makes very little difference to the plan whether you’re inside the complex or working outside. Just as long as we can prevent Larsen from using that drug. If he does that, we’re gone. Any ideas?”

  He was being particularly democratic. Which meant he didn’t have an idea himself. Neither did I.

  But Chris did. “Why don’t we just give him what he wants?” He paused expectantly, waiting for the flood of opposition, but he received only silence, so he went on. “Larsen’s desperate. No argument, no threat is going to stop him from trying one last throw of the dice. And he sees that as whacking the Babies with another dose of
ga-ga juice. We can’t stop him, and the Babies won’t. We know that. The only solution is to give him what he wants, so that he feels no need to resort to chemical persuasion.”

  Now, Gordon objected. “Oh, great. We’ve just spent the best part of a year using all our ingenuity to keep everything from him, and now, when the light’s at the end of the tunnel, you want to give him everything. You must be —”

  “What difference does it make now?” Lesley, who was standing right beside me, suddenly cut in. She had caught on to Chris’s line of reasoning. “You’re supposed to be the lateral thinker, Gord, so start thinking. What’s the date today?”

  “December twelfth, why?”

  “Why? Don’t you get it? After all this time, we only have to buy a couple more weeks – less, even. Even if we get the Babies to open up to Larsen, he can’t learn enough to make much difference. And he’ll be so excited that he’ll probably get careless. If we fail, it’ll make very little difference anyway. But at least it’ll stop him blowing it with a hypodermic full of Pentothal.”

  Susan had been quiet until now, but she spoke in support. “Chris is right. They can open up without revealing too much. And it could buy us just enough time.”

  And so it was decided.

  The rest of the kids gathered around the coffee-table, making plans, revising strategies, but I was watching Susan. A look of extreme tiredness passed across her face. And something else. An expression of … almost despair, which settled for a fleeting moment then was gone.

  But it worried me.

  * * *

  So Larsen got his wish at last. Almost two years after the project began, the Babies talked to him.

  Not in words, you understand, but in a way he could accept. They began by writing his name, Doctor Larsen, over and over on sheets of paper until he came from behind the one-way glass to talk to them.

  He’d ask them questions and they’d write down answers. Vague replies, but satisfying ones, while he took meticulous notes.

  Yes, they could “hear” each others’ minds. Yes, the other people in the complex gave out thoughts, but they were fuzzy, hard to “hear”. And yes, they would like to play some “games” with him.

  I thought that last one was beautifully ironic. They really were playing games with him, but he was so ecstatic with the “breakthrough” that he actually thought they meant his puerile intelligence tests.

  And all the time, D-Day was getting closer. Erik was fine-tuning the bus and Chris was checking for the hundred-thousandth time the intricate patterns of his “special program”.

  While I was busy waiting around for something to happen.

  “What’s so special about your ‘special program’?” When I get bored, I ask a lot of annoying questions, but Chris rarely got annoyed; not when he was talking about his pet projects.

  “It’s a virus.”

  “What, like pneumonia?” I was only stirring him. I knew what a computer virus was, but I liked to hear him explain things. When he was tied up in a project, he had no sense of humour; he was so intense.

  “More like AIDS.” Now he had me going. “I had to design a virus that would ruin his whole hard-disc memory and corrupt any copies he made of particular files, but didn’t alert him until it was too late …”

  I must have looked confused, because he paused and moved into simpleton-mode; the tone he used for cretins who couldn’t understand simple gobbledy-gook.

  “Look, it’s really not very complicated in principle. A program is just a series of instructions, telling the computer to do a series of things. I needed to tell Larsen’s computer to do things he didn’t want it to do, at a time when he really didn’t want it to do them. So I had to introduce a ‘virus’ – a program which corrupts the way the computer does things.

  “And I’m really rather proud of this one. It’s so frustratingly simple. It’s tied in to the computer’s internal clock, and set to activate itself the first time the computer is turned on after a given time and date. I’ll leave you to work out when that is.”

  I didn’t need to work it out. I knew. D-Day. H-hour. The Point of No Return.

  “And, what exactly will it do?”

  “Oh, nothing much. It just wipes every document file and every back-up file on the hard-disc and replaces them with a cryptic little message.”

  “But what about the copies he’s already made? How can it corrupt them?”

  “Oh, it already has. I had Erik feed the virus into the central computer back in September. Part of its beauty is that it transfers to the disc every time a file is copied then infects every machine that disc is put into. That’s why it’s like AIDS. Once it’s in there, it’s incurable. In the past couple of months, Larsen’s worked with just about every one of the files, searching for his breakthrough. They’re all corrupted already, only it won’t show up until the right moment. But after that point, as soon as they’re loaded, they’ll disappear, and the message will come to screen.”

  He waited, but I wasn’t going to bite.

  “Well, don’t you want to know what the message is? It wasn’t actually my idea. I asked Greg if he could think of a suitable message, and he came up with it. He said it was ‘fitting’.”

  “Okay, I’ll go for it. What does it say?”

  “It’s a quote. Greg told me where it was from, but I forget. When it appears, it fills the whole screen. I thought it was sort of appropriate.”

  And when Chris told me what it was, so did I.

  XXXII

  Point of No Return

  December 24, 1990. 9pm

  Most of the research staff had left on the weekend for the holiday break, and Larsen was alone in the observation room. The Babies had presented him with the best Christmas present of his life; he was feeling better than he had in years.

  Let Brady try to steal his thunder now. Let him just try. The Wall was down. He had won. The world was his. And once the mysteries were unravelled … Then he had only to find the original cause, and – the end of the rainbow.

  Nothing could ruin the feeling …

  From the passage outside came the sound of running feet and Sanderson’s voice, crying out. A single man, with no family, Sanderson had volunteered to stay over and assist during the holiday break; with his help and MacIntyre’s (he lived close by), Larsen was running the Institute. Which really meant the Babies’ complex, as all the other children had been packed off home for the break.

  The young scientist burst into the room, breathless from running.

  “What is it, man?” Larsen was impatient with anything that interrupted his dreams of grandeur.

  “F-fire! The whole residential block is alight. I’ve called the fire-brigade, but it’s a ten-minute drive from town. We’ve got to do something.”

  An icy fear chilled the pit of Larsen’s stomach. The residential block included his personal office and all his private notes and files.

  The two men left the room at a run.

  By the time they arrived the fire had a strong hold. There was little they could do to save anything inside. Larsen ran around the back to the window of his study, but the flames were already licking the ceiling and the interior of the room was an inferno.

  The glass had shattered with the intense heat, but before the rolling smoke forced him away from the window, he noticed something which froze him momentarily where he stood.

  The fireproof safe in which he kept all the most important notes, all the proofs of his research, stood open to the flames. Everything was destroyed. Worse even than that, it proved beyond a doubt that the fire had been deliberately lit.

  And that meant …

  Desperately, he turned and ran back towards the other complex, across the lawn and past the old eucalypt. But he was too late. As he approached, the Institute bus was just pulling away from the building. The firelight reflecting from the bus windows blinded him to what was inside, but he did not need to see. He knew.

  Five young children and at least one other per
son. The mysterious dark man had returned.

  Inside, nothing appeared to be out of place. He ran to the office. Everything was tidy. There was nothing … except a strangely familiar odour. The tart smell of acid. Looking towards the filing cabinet, he saw the empty bottle, and he guessed. The fight was draining out of him rapidly as he made his way slowly across the room.

  Opening the top drawer, he staggered back as the acrid fumes burned his eyes and tore at the lining of his nose. Someone had poured highly concentrated acid into every drawer of the cabinet, and it was eating its way through the notes and files. Through all the evidence he had collected so painstakingly over the past two long years.

  He was crying now, but not from the fumes. His world was caving in around him; he could only go through the motions of seeing if there was anything left to save.

  The video cabinet stood half-open and the wisp of smoke that drifted out told him that there too the acid was at work.

  Finally, he gazed towards the computer. It stood on the desk. A final forlorn hope. He pressed the switch, and the mechanism started up.

  As it went through its set-up sequence, he held his breath. Then … the final nail. For a moment, the screen went blank, then red. A message appeared. Three words which filled the entire screen and mocked his broken dreams.

  He read the words in silence.

  KNOW FIRST THYSELF

  9.15 pm

  The policeman who took the call sounded young, but he was quite efficient. He took all the details of the bus and the direction in which it had been heading. A car was on its way to the complex, and should arrive soon. Or so he said.

  Where the hell was the fire-brigade? They should have arrived ages ago. Larsen looked out of the window. The flames leapt high, curling over the roof, exploding from windows. Already, there was nothing left to save. Absolutely nothing.

  The minutes stretched endlessly, but no help came. Nor would it.

  Outside the fence, at the point where the underground phone cable entered the complex, Gordon and Lesley began to pack away the gear Chris had supplied. Carefully Gordon unplugged the portable handset from the socket which they had spliced into the line a few days earlier. Once it was removed the line resumed its normal function.