Free Forever Dead by Suzanne F. Kingsmill Page A

Martha’s face grew more disgusted still. Shifting like an ocean wave battering against the sand it ebbed and waned as her thoughts raced through her head, changing her features like the skin of a chameleon. I really believed that her features might disintegrate in imitation of what she was thinking. “Oh, lord save me, Cordi, how can you do these things?”
    I shrugged, stifled a smile. “Two of them are on the far wall in the two cages by the sink. The rest are in the common lab. There wasn’t room in mine.” Not surprising, I thought — my lab was almost as small as my office. I was always having to beg for space from my colleagues who seemed to have gobs of it … but then, they all had the perks that go with tenure. Martha marshalled her features back into a more or less normal position and waddled out of my office.
    I looked at the mail piled high on the desk, sorted through it quickly — nothing from the NSERC grants people yet. God, how they kept me waiting and hoping, second-guessing myself and my competence ten times a day. I was almost out of funds, and without the grant I wouldn’t be able to fund a graduate student next fall, and without a graduate student, the department might not be interested in granting me another year. Jesus, life could be a bitch. I stashed all the mail in a big box for some future free moment, and then I returned a dozen calls and put off the lecture planning people another two weeks — how could I give them the synopsis of my course when I had no material? I’d have to fudge it and hope the Dean didn’t call me in and grill me.
    I gazed out the window, wondering how to pick up my career, feeling the dark cobwebby entrails of depression reaching out for me. My heart lurched at the horrible feeling, and I struggled to rid the thoughts from my head. I’d never get tenure if I couldn’t control my periodic depressions.
    There was a quick step and heavy breathing, and I was thankful for an interruption until the round, wrecked face of Martha reappeared in the room. I read disaster in every nuance of the wobbling, shivering flesh on her face.
    â€œJesus, Martha, what happened to you? You look like a squashed spider.”
    It was true. Every ounce of flesh on her face seemed to be sagging into a puddle and her skin was as white as milk. Martha took in a great deep breath and grew rounder, like a balloon. “It’s your lab, Cordi.” It came out in a screech that set my nerves to grinding.
    â€œWhat is it? What’s happened?” I asked, moving quickly around my desk, the pit of my stomach lurching like a tugboat in a jar full of hurricanes.
    â€œI think you’d better come see for yourself.” I took one last look at Martha’s face as it seemed to metamorphose into even greater doom and raced out of my office, taking the stairs two at a time. There was no one in the long corridor. The doors were closed on all sides and the institutional tiles on the floor sparkled in the overhead fluorescent lighting. My door was the sixth from the end, on the right.
    It was ajar, and even before I reached it, I smelled it.
What is it about smell and disaster these days?
I thought calmly, in that unreality before reality hits. I walked in.
    Everything seemed to be in its place, nothing wrong except for the heavy reek of insecticide. It was everywhere — the air was glutinous with it. “This isn’t happening,” I said, trying to will it so. “It’s not happening.” I moved in a daze from cage to cage. Insect after insect, dead. The mice and salamanders seemed okay, but who knew what the chemical would have done to my controlled conditions? All garbage now. Thank God I wasn’t in the middle of any mantid experiment.
    Nothing could stop the deadly work of the insecticide. I moved from cage to cage unbelieving, touching the cages, looking in. But at least my data was safe. The insects could be