A Cage of Butterflies (2 page)

II

Beginnings

June 14, 1989

“Believe me, Mrs Matheson, I know how you must feel …” Larsen sat in the kitchen, his fingers interlocked, elbows resting on the surface of the tiny dining-table. “But I think we both want what's best for the children.” He paused and watched the woman's face, as his arguments began to register.

“Few families can take the strain of
one
autistic child, but
twins
… Even if your husband were still alive, I would advise the same course; if only for the sake of your other children.”

“Would I be allowed to see them?” She was weakening, as he knew she must. A good mother, loving, caring – searching for a solution to the hopeless situation she was facing.

He smiled reassurance. “Of course. The Institute is not a prison, Mrs Matheson. Visits can be easily arranged. But, to be blunt, in cases this severe they can be quite depressing. We are at the leading edge of research into this sort of problem, but it is still extremely difficult to predict the rate of progress of individuals. I
can
promise the best of care and expert attention.” He smiled again, reaching across to touch the woman's arm. “It is all for the best.”

“I know, but …” She faltered. He had won. “It's just so hard to cope, sometimes … I want to do what's right. For all of us.”

Larsen nodded and drew the paper from the inside pocket of his jacket …

* *

August 15, 1989

“Come on, pick them up. It's obvious they're not going to walk on their own.” MacIntyre was snarling, as usual, and Erik, the young orderly, shot a pained look at the back of his white lab-coat.

The twins were seven years old, though they barely looked five, but the old goat was right, Erik thought. They weren't about to walk into the facility under their own steam. He reached in to take hold of the nearest child, and was surprised to feel how cold and clammy his skin was. He paused for a moment and looked at the little boy's face. The tiny blue eyes were staring straight at him, but there was a blankness there, a passivity, which refused to acknowledge his existence. He lifted the child, amazed at how little he weighed, and made his way inside.

Myriam was standing beside the door to the twins' room as he carried the little boy in. She had free-run of the complex and the staff were used to her silent presence materialising suddenly beside them. Out of habit, Erik spoke to her.

“Well, Myriam, we've found a couple of friends for you to play with.” He smiled. The idea of Myriam
playing
with anyone, especially these two, was … ridiculous. What he failed to notice, as he passed into the room, was the slight movement of the little girl's head, as she followed his progress with her eyes. But it was not Erik who held her attention. Ian Matheson was looking back at her over the orderly's shoulder, and as their eyes met, something like communication, or recognition, passed between them.

For the first time since her arrival in July, a smile touched Myriam's lips … But there was no one there to see it.

October 20, 1989

“Just shut up and watch!” Larsen spoke shortly, without removing his gaze from the TV screen. There was no real anger in his tone, and MacIntyre ignored his abruptness. Larsen's telephone summons had sounded important. Important enough for him to break a dinner date with his wife.

The video was in search mode, rewinding; at that speed he could see nothing unusual. Just the three Babies, sitting around a table, doodling on sheets of paper. There was no sign of communication. There never was.

Larsen pressed a button on the remote and the picture moved forward at normal speed. There was no sound but the background noises of a bare room and the occasional shuffling of paper.

“So, what's new?” MacIntyre sounded impatient. His wife's cold anger was still prickling at him. She hated her plans being disrupted.

“Just watch …”

MacIntyre watched, and he saw.

Myriam sat at one end of the table, flanked by the twins: Ian on her left and his tiny sister, Rachael, on her right. It was not by choice. They had been placed in those positions by the observers. It didn't seem to matter to them where they sat, even if they sat at all.

Suddenly, as if in response to some unseen signal, both the twins stopped drawing and pushed their papers to the middle of the table in front of Myriam, who, without looking at either of her companions, gathered the sheets together with her own paper, pushed back her chair and left the room. The twins remained unmoving, no expression showing on their faces.

Larsen stopped the tape.

“It's a bit strange …” MacIntyre began, but Larsen cut in. “It's more than strange. Look at these.” He held up three pieces of paper. “I took these from Myriam's room while she was being bathed.”

MacIntyre took the sheets, placed them on the desk in front of him and studied them for a moment. At first, he could make nothing of the roughly-scribbled pencil lines. Then his companion leaned across, rearranged them, and rotated one of the pages half a turn.

And MacIntyre saw what Larsen had seen.

“If there was ever any doubt about them, it's gone now.” Larsen sounded triumphant. “They're no more autistic than you or I. The question is, what the hell are they?”

III

MIKKI'S STORY

Greg's really not half as tough as he makes out, and when you consider what he's been through, he's remarkably well adjusted. He was about the first kid my age they introduced me to when I arrived, and they'd warned me about him. But they needn't have worried; it was nothing I wasn't used to.

You see, I have an uncle – my mother's older brother, actually. Stepped on a landmine in Vietnam. 1972, I think it was. Just six weeks before they pulled the troops out. Thirty-seven operations and prosthetic limbs below the knees … but he learned to walk again. First with a frame, then with those crutches that wrap around your forearms. The same type that Greg uses. I guess I could see a lot of my uncle in Greg. He was always my favourite uncle, even with his sick sense of humour.

I know. Metamide. The famous Babies. Well, that's the first thing they got wrong. One thing they never were was Babies – though I guess no one could have been expected to know that. Not at the beginning.

They had them locked away in another part of the complex, and they'd told nobody about them. They never really told us about them. Even in the end. We just sort of found out.

Katie was the first of any of us to “hear” them. One night – actually, it was about two in the morning – she sat bolt upright in bed and switched on the reading light. I was sharing a room with her; normally she slept like Ayers Rock. Anyhow, after she'd succeeded in waking me up, she stared me right in the eye and said: “She's hurting.”

I knew I was going to regret it, but I asked anyway. “Who?”

“Myriam.” And before I could get any more out of her, she lay down again and went off to sleep – with the light on.

I checked the records later, before they were destroyed. That was just about the time Myriam's appendix burst. They nearly lost her. I wonder how different things might have been if she'd died that night. She didn't, of course.

I cornered Katie next day and asked her who Myriam was, but she just clammed up and walked off, mumbling, “I
promised”
or something like that. It was funny. She'd never kept anything from me before.

Then the dreams started. Well, they weren't dreams, exactly. More like flash images. Like catching isolated words from one side of a conversation – but inside your head. At first, I thought it was just me. I'd been working pretty hard and not sleeping well, and it always happened in that limbo period between waking and sleeping. You know, when your mind goes into neutral and your subconscious starts to take over, then you can never remember anything when you wake up. Still, there was something: a feeling, a nagging strangeness at the back of my mind. I found myself waiting for it to happen again, which it did – but only when I was too drowsy to make sense of it.

And Katie began talking in her sleep. I didn't make the connection straight away, but finally one night it clicked. Whatever she was mumbling into her pillow was somehow related to those strange feelings. A few words from Katie, and a tingling would begin at the back of my brain and work its way forward, tantalisingly close to making some kind of sense. More words from Katie, another burst of static. So that was the secret she'd promised to keep … Myriam's secret.

Suddenly, I was wide awake. I looked across at Katie. The moon was shining through the window, and she'd turned so that her face was in the light. It was obvious that she was asleep,
even though her eyes were wide open …

IV

Butterflies

February 10, 1990

The day was stifling, and even the mandatory trip to the beach was a waste of effort. By the time the Institute minibus arrived, the heat had drained away any energy they might have started out with. The sea was choppy; the waves all over the place and dangerous looking.

Chris spoke, after taking one look at the water. “It seems like we have an interesting choice. Either we can all sit here on the beach and turn into a single giant grease-spot, or we can go swimming and get smashed to a pulp.”

They decided to brave the waves.

Half an hour later, battered and defeated – and still hot – they were on their way back to the farm. Erik, who was driving, shoved a cassette into the player. An old Queen tape; he had every one ever released.

Greg approved. The music began near the end of the song; sitting up just behind the driver's seat, he kept the beat, tapping his unmoving knees with his hands while the speakers blared:

What the hell we fighting for?

Just surrender and it won't hurt at all

Just got time to say your prayers

While you're waiting for the hammer to fall …

Pretty depressing message, but the beat was infectious. And wasn't that really how most kids felt? Powerless. At the mercy of forces beyond their ability to control. Waiting for something to happen …

He listened to the guitar riff building to a climax, and looked around him.

Every kid on the bus had some special gift. Abilities beyond the understanding of most people. But what had it gained them? Rejection by kids of their own age. Freak status with those adults who weren't actually scared of them. And a home away from home with Larsen and MacIntyre and the other researchers, who set them tasks, monitored the results and generally used them as guineapigs.

Only Erik treated them like people. And Susan. But Erik was just an orderly – a general, if sympathetic, dog's-body. Of all the researchers, only Susan seemed to notice they had feelings. And she was new. The others were, not cruel, but … clinical.

It was no wonder the two of them seemed to have hit it off so well, so quickly. Gretel had noticed it first, of course, but it wasn't difficult to see. Neither of them had anyone else to talk to.

Except us,
he thought.

While you're waiting for the hammer to fall …

Greg looked across at Mikki. She smiled and touched his hand. He knew she understood. They had talked about it often enough. He took her hand and smiled back.

The track had finished, and the first quiet chords of the next song filtered through the bus. Gretel was staring out of the window, deep in thought. Lesley and Gordon were playing chess – without a chess-set – naming their moves, and imagining them on the board in their minds. They were amazing. They never argued about a move, or where a piece was situated, and if you asked them, they could recite every move that had been made. That was their special talent. Not chess: remembering. Both Gordon and Lesley had eidetic memories – they could recall everything they read or heard or saw. Perfectly.

“You know what I'd like to do when we get out of here?” Greg drew Mikki's attention away from the passing scenery. “Assuming we get time off for good behaviour and we're still not eligible for the old-age pension.”

“Why do I get the feeling you're going to tell me?”

“I'd like to set up a group of people with special talents.” He looked around at the others. “A bit like this lot. I reckon we could make a fortune inventing things, designing special computer programs, trouble-shooting – you know, solving problems that require some sort of radical solution. Generally doing the brainwork, freelance.”

“Sort of ‘Hire-a-Genius', you mean?” As always, she was on his wavelength.

“Exactly. I've even got a name for it. We could call it ‘Think-Tank Incorporated'.”

Mikki looked at him and smiled. He was such a dreamer, sometimes.

He looked out of the window, then turned to her again.

“What do you think they really want from us? Larsen and the others.”

She thought for a moment.

“You know, I don't think they have a clue.” Now, Mikki looked back at the others. “We're like a new toy … or a new energy source, and they're just playing with us, experimenting. Working out what we can do. What
they
can do with us. All the testing, the experimental stuff. It's as if we're some unexplored national resource. Too valuable to waste, but they haven't found a real use for us yet. Do you know who pays for this whole set-up?”

Greg didn't. He shrugged. “The government, I suppose. Who else would bother with a bunch of …”

“You'd suppose wrong.” As she spoke, she fumbled in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a single piece of bubblegum. “They do get their share of research grants and other handouts, but the farm itself belongs to Raecorp Australia.”

“Rae – who?”

“Raecorp. It's a subsidiary of Raecorp International. They're a multi-national with fingers in a hundred different pies, from heavy industry to food and pharmaceuticals.” She unwrapped the gum, broke it deftly in half and handed him a piece.

“And what would they want with us?”

“Maybe nothing. We might just be some accountant's idea of a corporate tax-deduction. But these companies work a lot on spec. If Larsen draws a blank with us, they can write it off as research. If, on the other hand, he comes up with something marketable, they can cash in and corner the market.”

Erik turned the bus in through the open gates of the Institute.

“But I still can't see what they hope to get from
us
…” Greg gestured around the interior of the vehicle, including the others in the sweep of his arm.

“Like I said, maybe nothing. Maybe we're a front for whatever they have going on in
there.”
She inclined her head towards the small complex of buildings, nestled in the gully beside the chain-link fence that separated the farm from the world at large. The complex which was off-limits to all but essential staff. “Do you ever wonder what they
do
in there?”

“With Larsen in charge … They probably pull the wings off butterflies and record the screams.” Greg tempered his obvious dislike of the head researcher with a practised grin, which Mikki ignored.

“You really can't stand the guy, can you?”

“Him, or his Siamese twin … Do you ever watch them? Larsen itches, MacIntyre scratches himself.”

Now Mikki smiled. “But they're always arguing. They remind me of Bert and Ernie.”

“Or Hitler and Goering …” Greg's tone was serious.

“Oh, come on. They're not
that
bad.”

“Maybe not. But they're cold. And obsessive. I wouldn't put anything past them … in the name of research.”

“Like pulling the wings off butterflies?” She squeezed his hand slightly and their eyes met.

Greg's voice was coldly even, in spite of his smile.

“Metaphorically speaking …”

* * *

Beyond the brick of the wall, the bus was passing, creeping slowly along the gravel drive towards the main complex.

Myriam paused and followed the progress of the half-dozen or so thought-patterns with her mind, as they drifted past.

“… Is this the world we've created?”

The boy, Greg, was listening to a song on the radio … no, a tape. And thinking.

“We didn't create anything, yet. They can't blame us for the mess the world's in …”

Aware of the camera, which recorded her every move, Myriam sneaked a glance at the twins. Ian was dozing on one of the bean-bags in the corner, his thoughts a blur of subconscious ramblings, while Rachael was drawing again.

Butterflies …