Free Fifty Fifty by S. L. Powell Page A

rollercoaster feeling swept over him again and for a while the ground and the sky switched places. Gil lay back on the bed with his
eyes closed, trying to picture Jude the way he had looked on the television news. He very badly wanted to see Jude again. He needed Jude to appear out of nowhere to rescue him, crashing through the
ceiling on a rope dangled out of a helicopter.
    There was a knock on the door and Dad came in before Gil could say anything.
    ‘I’m making tea,’ he said. ‘What would you like?’
    ‘Uh – maybe just a cheese sandwich.’
    ‘You had that for lunch,’ said Dad.
    Gil looked up at Dad as he stood in the doorway, with the W-shaped crease between his eyebrows, and black hair flopping over his face. He looked so ordinary, and he was talking about ordinary
things. Could the people who did the things in Jude’s booklet really seem so normal? It was hard to make sense of it. The idea came into Gil’s head that Dad might be like one of those Doctor Who monsters that look exactly the same as human beings, until the moment when their skin splits open and the alien inside bursts out and starts to devour people.
    ‘OK then, pasta,’ Gil said.
    ‘Are you OK?’ said Dad.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Gil. ‘Fine.’
    Dad nodded, and then he frowned. He’d seen the booklet.
    ‘Have you read this?’ he said, picking it up and leafing through it quickly.
    ‘Mmmm.’
    Dad hesitated. ‘It’s not . . .’ he started. ‘It’s not the way they make it sound, Gil. This is deliberately written to shock people. It’s propaganda. There is
another side to it, you know.’
    ‘Oh,’ Gil said. ‘Really.’
    ‘For one thing, they’ve lumped everything in together. I can see that at once. They don’t make any distinction at all between different kinds of animal testing.’
    Was there a difference? Gil didn’t see how.
    ‘Maybe we can talk about it sometime,’ said Dad, after a short silence.
    No, you mean Maybe I’ll give you a lecture on why you should see things exactly the way I do, Gil thought, but instead he said, ‘Why did you never tell me you did experiments
on animals?’
    ‘Well . . .’
    Dad looked at the floor and didn’t answer for a while. He flicked a corner of Jude’s booklet.
    ‘Safety, partly. Some of my colleagues have had their property attacked. Car tyres let down, brakes damaged, fireworks through the letterbox, even occasional death threats. When
you’re in that situation, the fewer people who know what you do the better. And it’s a difficult subject, I acknowledge that. I was going to tell you when I thought you were old enough
to cope with it.’
    ‘And when would that have been, exactly?’
    ‘Gil, I didn’t want you to be upset or frightened.’
    ‘It’s pretty frightening to suddenly find out that my dad’s a . . .’
    ‘A what?’
    Torturer. Gil opened his mouth but he couldn’t say it. Dad looked serious and a bit impatient, the way he always looked during this kind of discussion. But behind him Gil could see
the shadow of another Dad, a man in a white coat with a knife in his hand, grinning like a madman.
    ‘Gil, listen. I am a respected scientist who makes tiny genetic changes in mice in order to try and bring about massive improvements in the health of thousands of people. I do not hurt
animals for fun. I don’t believe in fox hunting. I don’t approve of factory farming. I don’t support the use of animals in testing cosmetics and chemicals. I certainly don’t
agree with using animals to test weapons of any sort. But what we’re doing in our labs – it’s different, Gil. It’s critically important research.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Gil. ‘Right.’ Argue back, you moron, he told himself, but Dad was off again before he could put a sentence together.
    ‘And even if I didn’t disagree so profoundly with their views,’ Dad went on, waving Jude’s booklet, ‘I really wouldn’t want you getting mixed up in this
animal rights stuff. It’s too