‘Of course. Please be seated.’
Mr Geoffrey operated some kind of control and suddenly the room was filled with strange animal noises. It’s a zoo, Jane thought. That’s why it smells. I’m in a zoo. I’m in a prehistoric zoo.
‘Oh my God,’ said Luke, remembering his role as eager investor. ‘Listen to that, Jane. They must have at least one mammoth in here. Or sabretooths. Or giant bears. I can’t wait to see. Can you?’
Having built his moment and with a flourish, Mr Geoffrey activated the viewing screens. Jane and Luke both craned their necks for a better look.
There were no mammoths. Or sabretooths. Or giant bears. What there was defied belief. For what seemed like a very long time, Jane’s shocked mind refused to take it all in. She stared and stared, looking without seeing, unmoving, unspeaking, while her brain scrambled to comprehend.
They were looking down into a vast space, most of which must surely be underground. The floor was of a thick, black material, possibly rubber. For easy hosing down, she realised later. Transparent cages were arranged around two walls, all in neat tiers. Two rows of five on each wall. A mini forklift stood nearby with a bored operator picking his teeth.
The third wall was taken up with illuminated tanks. For one mad moment, Jane thought they were aquaria. Just normal, pretty aquaria with normal, pretty tropical fish flitting in and out of the coral.
She was completely wrong. These tanks were not filled with fish. These tanks were filled with . . . things. And parts of things. Heads, organs, limbs, bits of limbs, all floated gently in a pretty iridescent blue fluid. A head, eyes staring blindly, rotated slowly in a jar. Some trick of the fluid seemed to give movement to its features. For one horrifying moment, Jane thought it might be still alive.
She wrenched her eyes away, back to the cages and their inmates. Twenty cages but not all were occupied. Two of them held nursing mothers with their young. Two more held heavily pregnant females, shifting restlessly to find a comfortable position in a too-small cage. Two bigger cages on the top row held the big males.
Except under very special dispensation, animal experimentation was mostly banned. How could this be possible? She stared at the occupants in disbelief. They were all showing signs of considerable distress, crying and wailing. One repeatedly banged her head against the transparent side, leaving a smear of blood every time. Another slumped, blank-eyed in her cage, listlessly awaiting her fate. One lay ominously silent on the grid floor of their cage.
‘Our social enrichment units,’ said Mr Geoffrey, gesturing proudly.
‘They’re cages,’ said Jane, flatly refusing to buy into this social enrichment crap.
‘We don’t use that term here. We prefer to call them social enrichment units.’
‘I prefer the term rich and beautiful,’ said Jane, ‘but that still doesn’t make me anything other than poor and plain. They can’t even stand up in those pokey little . . . cages.’
‘Oh, they don’t live in these,’ said Mr Geoffrey, quite shocked she could think such a thing. ‘Their habitat is in quite another part of the facility. These are just today’s subjects. Brought in on a daily basis as required. Now, as you can see, the modules are interchangeable and interlocking, allowing optimum viewing and access. Very light to transport. Very convenient.’
For whom? thought Jane.
‘Robust polycarbonate construction,’ continued Mr Geoffrey, mistaking her silent outrage for interest. ‘Rear flush for easy cleaning.’ He sighed. ‘We do what we can but they still stink. And sometimes we need access for discipline. As you can see, there’s been some resistance.’ They could clearly see old blood and faecal smears across the transparent sides of the units.
Seemingly oblivious to the lack of enthusiasm from his audience, he continued. ‘Food and water are delivered automatically, although we do have problems in that area. They starve themselves, you know. And they’re surprisingly resistant to force-feeding. Often, it’s a race to finish the treatment before they croak and we have to write that one off and start again. Still, it does mean the feed bill is negligible, so swings and roundabouts . . . you know.’ He waved an airy hand.
The centre of the room was a large laboratory, divided into individual working areas by transparent partitions. Which meant that what was being done to those spread-eagled face-up on the tables was visible to all. Including those waiting their turn in their social enrichment units.
Masked people in sterile scrubs bustled around with clipboards, or stood silently around a table, watching with intense concentration some sort of surgical procedure taking place. So thickly were they clustered around that Jane was unable to make out the patient.
Mr Geoffrey was complacently regarding the activity below. ‘What do you think?’
Luke turned to face him and Jane realised suddenly she’d never before seen Luke angry. Contemptuous, yes. Insolent, yes. Impatient, dismissive – all of those – but never so utterly, totally, fundamentally, dangerously furious as he was at this moment. His mouth was set in a hard line. She wondered if he knew how much like his father he looked. His eyes glittered. He was silent and she knew he was, for the moment, beyond words.
Because the occupants of the cages weren’t animals. They weren’t even primates. They were people. Real people. Jane and Luke stared, silent and unbelieving. Jane took in the low foreheads. The prominent brow ridges. The receding chins. The wide nostrils. These were the local indigenous people. These were Neanders and Site X was a people-experimentation unit.
31
Time Police training is arduous and thorough. There are procedures for everything. Jane stepped back from Geoffrey, closed her eyes and counted. According to her instructors, the brain prioritises counting to the exclusion of everything else. Anyone who tells you to calm down and count to ten is giving good advice. Jane counted to ten, took a breath, braced herself for what she would see and made herself look.
Neanders appeared to vary in size and shape as much as modern humans. Their skin colour was darker – almost a terracotta colour – but their hair colour ranged from black to what might have been fair if it wasn’t so caked and matted. No white or grey hair. She wondered whether, in Mr Geoffrey’s world, old people were worthless for his purposes or whether Neanders simply didn’t live that long.
In addition to being caged, the two males were manacled. Jane could see bald patches where their hair had been ripped out. Could these injuries be self-inflicted? She knew parrots frequently plucked themselves bald. Her grandmother had owned a naked pink thing that crouched malevolently on its perch, taking great chunks out of anything approaching too closely – including itself. Even from up here she could see all the Neanders bore the marks of electrical burns where they’d been zapped too often.
The one making the most noise was keening in a corner. The sounds of her grief drifted through the intercom.