The Complete Short Stories

He saw the girl again the next day at Whitby’s laboratory. He had driven over after breakfast with the new specimen, eager to get it into a vivarium before it died. The only previous armoured mutant he had come across had nearly broken his neck. Speeding along the lake road a month or so earlier he had struck it with the offside front wheel, expecting the small creature to flatten instantly. Instead its hard lead-packed shell had remained rigid, even though the organism within it had been pulped, had flung the car heavily into the ditch. He had gone back for the shell, later weighed it at the laboratory, found it contained over 600 grammes of lead.

Quite a number of plants and animals were building up heavy metals as radiological shields. In the hills behind the beach house a couple of old-time prospectors were renovating the derelict gold-panning equipment abandoned over eighty years ago. They had noticed the bright yellow tints of the cacti, run an analysis and found that the plants were assimilating gold in extractable quantities, although the soil concentrations were unworkable. Oak Ridge was at last paying a dividend!!

Waking that morning just after 6-45 — ten minutes later than the previous day (he had switched on the radio, heard one of the regular morning programmes as he climbed out of bed) — he had eaten a light unwanted breakfast, then spent an hour packing away some of the books in his library, crating them up and taping on address labels to his brother.

He reached Whitby’s laboratory half an hour later. This was housed in a 100-foot-wide geodesic dome built beside his chalet on the west shore of the lake about a mile from Kaldren’s summer house. The chalet had been closed after Whitby’s suicide, and many of the experimental plants and animals had died before Powers had managed to receive permission to use the laboratory.

As he turned into the driveway he saw the girl standing on the apex of the yellow-ribbed dome, her slim figure silhouetted against the sky. She waved to him, then began to step down across the glass polyhedrons and jumped nimbly into the driveway beside the car.

‘Hello,’ she said, giving him a welcoming smile. ‘I came over to see your zoo. Kaldren said you wouldn’t let me in if he came so I made him stay behind.’

She waited for Powers to say something while he searched for his keys, then volunteered: ‘If you like, I can wash your shirt.’

Powers grinned at her, peered down ruefully at his dust-stained sleeves. ‘Not a bad idea. I thought I was beginning to look a little uncared-for.’ He unlocked the door, took Coma’s arm. ‘I don’t know why Kaldren told you that — he’s welcome here any time he likes.’

‘What have you got in there?’ Coma asked, pointing at the wooden box he was carrying as they walked between the gear-laden benches.

‘A distant cousin of ours I found. Interesting little chap. I’ll introduce you in a moment.’

Sliding partitions divided the dome into four chambers. Two of them were storerooms, filled with spare tanks, apparatus, cartons of animal food and test rigs. They crossed the third section, almost filled by a powerful X-ray projector, a giant 250 amp G.E. Maxitron, angled on to a revolving table, concrete shielding blocks lying around ready for use like huge building bricks.

The fourth chamber contained Powers’ zoo, the vivaria jammed together along the benches and in the sinks, big coloured cardboard charts and memos pinned on to the draught hoods above them, a tangle of rubber tubing and power leads trailing across the floor. As they walked past the lines of tanks dim forms shifted behind the frosted glass, and at the far end of the aisle there was a sudden scurrying in a large cage by Powers" desk.

Putting the box down on his chair, he picked a packet of peanuts off the desk and went over to the cage. A small black-haired chimpanzee wearing a dented jet pilot’s helmet swarmed deftly up the bars to him, chirped happily and then jumped down to a miniature control panel against the rear wall of the cage. Rapidly it flicked a series of buttons and toggles, and a succession of coloured lights lit up like a juke box and jangled out a two-second blast of music.

‘Good boy,’ Powers said encouragingly, patting the chimp’s back and shovelling the peanuts into its hands. ‘You’re getting much too clever for that one, aren’t you?’

The chimp tossed the peanuts into the back of its throat with the smooth, easy motions of a conjuror, jabbering at Powers in a singsong voice.

Coma laughed and took some of the nuts from Powers. ‘He’s sweet. I think he’s talking to you.’