Free The Deadly Space Between by Patricia Duncker Page B

glittering chrome tubes and robots, but never with living things, not plants and animals. Roehm did not seem to be part of the living world. I had imagined his laboratory as an automated machine, like a car assembly line or an arms factory. Yet all around me living things seethed and scuttled as I approached the cages and glass tanks. There was a faint smell of urine and rotting vegetables. It was unbearably hot. I found myself looking into the single unblinking eye of an iguana. I tugged at my shirt. Roehm settled down to watch the stately process of figures, line after line, marching down the blue screen.
    ‘You’ve never studied biological sciences, have you?’ He gazed calmly at the steady flood of figures.
    ‘Maths, French, German, English. I took my French A-level last summer.’ I recited parts of my recently completed UCAS form and stared back into the horrified eyes of the ring-tailed lemur. I tried to identify some of the animals. Something scrabbled into a hutch. It stank of fresh urine.
    ‘Just rabbits,’ said Roehm.
    He knew where I was in the laboratory without looking round.
    ‘Do you kill them?’
    ‘Are you involved in the animal rights campaign?’
    ‘My mother is.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Does she know what you do?’
    ‘She’s never been here. And you know better.’
    I surprised myself. A rush of pleasure made my fingers tingle. He had given me something special, a secret shared. The rabbit cowered in his hutch. I addressed the creature’s shaking ears.
    ‘Tough luck, punk.’
    Roehm laughed out loud behind me.
    There are walls of grey cabinets and here each one is labelled. Dates, coded letters. It’s like the X-Files . Nothing so simple as the alphabet. You’d have to know what you were looking for. Roehm’s hand closes over the mouse. I stare at his rings. He has slipped my jacket over the back of his swivel chair. He is still wearing his black leather greatcoat. He is perfectly cool. He is like the salamander. He lives in fire and ice. There is a square white sink, immaculately clean, with long-handled taps, like the ones they have in hospital operating theatres. To the left of the sink stand two waste bins with flip-top lids. One says ORGANIC WASTE . The other just says WASTE FOR SHREDDING . There is a large box of white plastic gloves, each pair individually sealed as if they were food on an aeroplane. The light remains dull, green. I peer into the retreating gloom. The laboratory appears to recede, long lines of shelves, desks, cages, tanks. There is a row of green overalls hanging on pegs. The smell is growing stronger. Further away, beyond the gold crescent on Roehm’s desk, I can see more glass tanks with oxygen bubbling up in streams. I dare not venture deeper into his strange kingdom.
    Roehm stands up, stretches. All the creatures flee into corners, terrified. Laboratory animals are usually bored, morose, unmoving. But these creatures seem to know that they are all doomed and fear their murderer’s every gesture. How do they know that he is going to torture and kill them?
    ‘You do genetics, don’t you?’
    ‘In a manner of speaking. Even you must have heard of global warming, Toby.’
    It is the first time that he has used my name. I stare back at his huge hands. He has not smoked for over an hour.
    ‘Well, we are experimenting with strains of plants and animal life that will resist intense heat and cold. Living things that can survive in fire and ice.’
    He speaks slowly, unhurried.
    ‘We must be ready for either. For the ice, or the fire next time.’
    I imagine a vast army of monsters, built like Frankenstein’s original creature, all of whom have the same gigantic paranoid eyes of the ring-tailed lemur. Roehm’s printer sucks and buzzes in the gloom. He takes each sheet from the tray as it comes out, face up, and folds it away in a leather portfolio, which zips up all round, so that it is sealed.
    ‘Come,’ says Roehm, ‘let’s go.’
    But we don’t go back. We