A Cage of Butterflies

Arbuthnot"

PROLOGUE

A Beginning and an End

February 16, 1989: 11pm

The dog was old. So old that even the instincts which had kept it alive for months on the streets were beginning to fail.

At times, from one small corner of its fading memory, the image of a face appeared. A human face: old, tired, its wrinkles framed in lank, yellow-grey hair.

And hands. Old hands that caressed sensitive ears and stroked with strong, even movements, smoothing the hair on back and flank. The master, who provided food, commanded loyalty.

Missing from that memory was the white van with the flashing red lights which had carried the master away. For ever.

It had begun to drizzle.

Drawn by a distant aroma of cooking, the old dog stepped from the kerb onto the still-warm surface of the highway, unaware of the danger. The headlights cut a moving swathe into the blackness; suddenly, too late, they washed over the animal, which froze, staring at the approaching threat, too old and tired to be frightened.

Behind the wheel, Richard Grace swore and pressed hard on the brake pedal as he turned the steering-wheel to the right in an effort to avoid the old Labrador which had appeared, almost magically, in his path.

The manila folders on the seat beside him slid forward, spilling files and sheets of paper onto the floor at his feet.

Too late, the young scientist realised his mistake. The back wheels of the car locked and began to slide on the greasy surface. A sudden panic knotted his stomach. He swung the wheel, trying to steer into the skid, but the front wheels struck the median-strip, wrenching the wheel from his grasp, and the car began to roll, almost in slow motion, until it was sliding along on its side, sending up a shower of metallic sparks. With a grinding of steel, it rode over the kerb before striking the power-pole with a force that crushed the boot like an eggshell, rupturing the fuel-tank. A moment of near silence, and then the tiny stream of petrol touched the red-hot exhaust …

The explosion split the suburban calm and yellow flames leapt high, swallowing the twisted remains of the car, greedily consuming everything inside it. A stream of humanity poured from the nearby houses to stare at the wreck in impotent disbelief. No one noticed the old dog as it resumed its interrupted journey.

It paused only a moment, to sniff disinterestedly at the charred remains of a sheet of computer paper, which had once contained a list of names and addresses, some of them emphasised by the line of pink hi-lighter ruled through them. The wind gusted and blew the remaining fragment into the gutter, where a thin stream of water, fed by the strengthening rain, carried it away down the drain.

The dog disappeared, limping, into the night.

December 24, 1990: 11.30 pm

At the end of the headland it was biting cold. The young woman took a few steps backwards, to stand in the lee of a large rock, shielding herself from the worst of the wind’s buffeting. The boulder radiated warmth – a reminder of the blistering day which had preceded the southerly change.

On the beach far below, breakers crashed foaming and angry onto the sand, the thundering hiss of their demise reaching the cliff top a fraction of a second later, like a badly-edited film. But she didn’t notice. She was totally alone; even the seagulls had been blown inland by the wind’s ferocity.

It was fast approaching midnight, and the shadowed white disc of the moon hung near the horizon in a frame of thunder heads, bleeding silver across the broken surface of the ocean. Lightning flashed, and out to sea distant thunder rumbled in reply.

She raised the binoculars and scanned the waves for a moment, before she spotted it. The boat was half a kilometre offshore, heading out to sea. At this distance, it was barely more than a tiny black speck against the silver moon-path, bobbing like a cork on the windswell, as it breasted the incoming waves.

She smiled briefly, knowing that hers were not the only eyes straining to catch sight of the fleeing craft. Larsen and MacIntyre were down on the beach below. She had seen them arrive a few minutes before, and once or twice since, in the lull between windgusts, the sound of their bickering and recriminations had drifted up. Stealing Larsen’s own cruiser for the escape was the salt in the wound; for a moment she almost felt sorry for him.

Slowly, she drew the small box from her pocket, and aimed it like someone switching television channels. A momentary hesitation, then she depressed the button. Almost instantaneously, there was a bright flash, followed an endless moment later by a dull thud, like a firecracker heard from a distance. Where, a few seconds earlier, the black dot of the Lisa-Marie had braved the rising sea, a couple of tiny flames flickered then died, as the waves closed over the crippled remains of the hull. In less than thirty seconds, it was as if the boat had never existed.

Lowering the binoculars, Susan Grace moved to the edge of the cliff and tossed the black box into the darkness. It hit the rocks below a few moments later, just as the white foam surged in. Then it was gone.

The first few heavy drops wet her cheeks as she looked up at the sky.

Well, Richard. It’s finally over. Maybe now the Babies will be at peace.

The rain began in earnest as she turned and made her way back down to the road.

The Other Side of the Glass

I would be friends with you and have your love …

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Who can enjoy alone?

John Milton, Paradise Lost

I

GREG’S STORY

She didn’t look at me the way most of them do. You know. The smile on the lips that doesn’t quite make it up to the eyes. And the way they try to focus on my face, as though I’m just a talking head and they’re a talk-show TV camera in close-up. I guess they figure if they avoid the bits of me that don’t work, they can ignore them.

The mind is a funny thing. Sometimes, when you don’t have anything better to do, try to empty your mind and think of nothing. Absolutely nothing. You can’t do it. As soon as you try, your mind takes over and finds a thousand things to fill itself up with. Even concentrating on nothing is something. Me, I usually end up thinking about girls, and the more I try not to, the more I do, and the less they end up wearing. So I give up. Girls are a lot more fun than nothing, with or without clothes.

It’s the same with people. The more they try to ignore my problem – as my mother calls it when she’s being polite to strangers -- the more their eyes wander. They try to hold my gaze, and you can see them checking out my legs. Then they catch themselves, and their eyes flick back to my face, while they try to think of something to say to hide the fact that really they don’t know what to say. And all the time, they’re wondering if I noticed them staring at my legs.

I play a game, sometimes – when I’m feeling particularly depressed, or bored, and I want to cheer myself up. When I’m introduced to someone for the first time, I say hello, then I just stare them straight in the eye. And wait.

Have you ever noticed how no one ever really looks anyone straight in the eye? No one except little kids and really old people, that is. But I guess age and childhood have their privileges.

Anyway, I do it, and I count how long it takes for them to break and look down. I even lean forward a little on my crutches, so that my legs look more twisted than usual. Embarrasses the hell out of them.

Joanna, my sister, informs me that it’s a crappy thing to do. She’s eighteen, and really old-fashioned sweet; crappy is about the strongest word she uses. And she’s right, of course. She also says that it’s a particularly childish form of self-pity and that I enjoy wallowing. But she’s wrong there. I’m not bitter. Or angry. The world’s really not all that bad. But I am interested in people – and their reactions. When you go through life with hind limbs as limp as Mama Fiorelli’s spaghetti – cooked al dente — you deserve a little diversion once in a while.

Anyway, this one was different. I gave her my best stare, and leaned forward over my crutches. But she just smiled. Eyes and all. And she stared right back. In the end, I had to break the silence.

New here?

Call me Mikki. And you’re Gregory?

Greg.

She nodded, and I could see her making a mental note, altering the database. Greg … It’s good to meet you at last. I’ve heard a lot about you … And she was in. No nervousness. No embarrassment.

Suddenly, I could hear myself making conversation. Welcome to the farm. I couldn’t help myself. Who needs cool and mysterious? I was in love. What are you in for …?

Perhaps I’d better explain about the farm. It’s no more a farm than I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the farm sounds better than the Institute or – to use the good ole American newspeak – the Facility. That’s what Dr Gorman called it when he was here, but he was only visiting; a Bicentennial loan from the psychology department of Harvard or Yale or somewhere, so we forgave him a lot.

Anyway, that’s what the farm is. An advanced learning facility. A plain, old-fashioned think-tank. A mismatched bunch of post- (most of us) pubescent misfits, with super-high IQs and sub-zero social skills, locked away in this cosy coastal retreat, partly because they don’t understand us any more than we understand them, but mainly because someone (though I’ve yet to meet anyone who knows exactly who) thought we might prove useful. Apparently think-tanks are really big overseas, especially in Eastern Europe; full of child prodigies. Geniuses tend to burn out early …

Actually, genius is a highly overrated commodity. Ask almost anyone at the farm. For a start, it tends to be quite specialised. Mention genius to most people and they think of Leonardo da Vinci or Einstein. But Einstein’s genius was limited to conceptual mathematics, and Leonardo … well, he was just lucky. He lived in the Renaissance, when they were all trying as hard as they could to learn as much as they could about everything. A mind like that comes along maybe once in a thousand years.

Your average genius generally focuses itself in one area.

Take Gretel, for example. She’s a whiz with multi-dimensional maths. Start her on the properties of the parallel symmetric matrix and she can talk up a storm; but – as she’s pointed out on more than one occasion – the subject rarely comes up in conversation. Especially among the half of the population whose interest in higher maths is limited to the stats from the weekend football and the bust dimensions of the Playmate of the Month. Unfortunately, this happens to be the half of the population that Gretel is hung up on. I suggested once, in her own best interests, that perhaps fourteen was a little young to be a cynical and frustrated would-be nymphomaniac, but she suggested a novel use for my crutches, which might have proved uncomfortable in strict three-dimensional terms. Genius can also be incredibly touchy!

I guess that’s why most of us don’t mind it here. It’s a place where we don’t have to pretend to be anything but what we are.

There are a couple of kids here who made it all the way to high school before anyone picked up that they were gifted. What a word!

It doesn’t take long to discover what being different means. So they learned early to blend in. Like Chris. He’d fake enough mistakes to keep him near the middle of the class. He played basketball and football. Even scored a few detentions and one letter home. But they got him in the end. And when it came, it was so elementary. He made the mistake of discussing the importance of Stephen Hawking’s unification work in quantum theory and relativity physics with one of the science teachers. Well, it wasn’t really a discussion. The teacher just stood there, mouth open, until Chris realised he’d blown it. Once they were on to him, there was no point in pretending any more. Actually, I think he was relieved. He was twelve years old by then. You just couldn’t live your whole life under a lie like that.

I never had Chris’s problem. When you look like I do, and spend your waking hours dragging your rearquarters around like an afterthought, there isn’t much point trying to pretend you’re the same as everyone else. So I went the opposite track. I fed my intellect – and my ego – and become an insufferable pain in the South Pole, until someone, in a desperate effort to save the sanity of western suburbia, exiled me to the farm.

Not that I minded at all. Especially after Mikki arrived … but that’s going over old ground.

The person you really want to hear about is Myriam. After all, she was the first – and perhaps the most amazing – of the Metamide Babies.

She arrived, we discovered later, early in July ’89, but some parts of the farm are off-limits even to the inmates, and we knew nothing about her until after the arrival of the Matheson twins halfway through August. That was when it all really began …