That was one of the reasons Grimley was right. We were always moving forward, not backward. Everyone except me, it seemed. Later that night, I lay in bed drifting in and out of a personal crisis. I was the one who was wrong, I knew. There was no future for the thylacine. There was no future for me either. In the middle of the night, a copter came down on the roof and I practically leaped into my exoskeleton. I raced to the animal enclosures, ready to set them free before Grimley and his goons got hold of them. But I was too late. The door opened and there stood Thien. He looked like he’d been crying.
“Okay, then. If that’s what you want,” he said.
I hummed across and hugged him close. “Thank you, my friend.”
That night the male thylacine died. We found him cold and dead.
A little part died in Thien too as we performed the autopsy. We found no cause. Sometimes nature is a mystery. That night, I dreamed that Grimley had arrived with armed enforcement officers. They entered the enclosure and aimed the weapons at our thylacines.
I couldn’t move my legs. My exoskeleton was lying on the floor across the room. Without it, I couldn’t move. “Please. No!”
Gunshots rang out. Then I was in the enclosure, holding our last tiger as she heaved and fitted, shaking like a broken toy. I was crying, struggling to say something.
“It’s the rational thing to do,” said Grimly. “It’s the compassionate thing to do.”
“Let’s call her Benjamin.” I looked into the glass enclosure at our last remaining thylacine. We’d cranked up her glands to ensure her sexual maturity. Then we’d implanted three embryos, using the greatest genetic variety coming from individual specimens that we could find.
“There’s something wrong with you, you know that?” said Thien.
“Come on, we called the last two Benjamin for the same reason. Think of the publicity. Think of the popular response. Grimley will love it. He’ll give us everything we want.”
“Deeply wrong.” Once he would have added a joking insult to the quip, but that was all gone now.
“Benjamin it is, then!” I refused to be dragged into the pall surrounding him.
Mercifully, Grimley hadn’t cut the electricity to the centre. Typical of the bureaucracy: They couldn’t get anything done without some terrible consensus discussion. Still, my credits were descending at a precipitous rate. We had enough to last another month. Benjamin was our final chance. All the time, I expected Grimley and his enforcements to arrive. He tried several times to call us on the vidlink. I avoided him.
“You have to speak to him,” said Thien.
“No.”
I had Thien set our system—which was coupled, of course, to the department’s and from there to the entire cloud—to alert us if a copter had set the centre as its destination. If that were the case, we’d have an hour to prepare.
When I returned upstairs, Thien exited the command room. “Grimley called again. He insists that we close up. He wants you to contact him.”
“You answered?” When he didn’t speak, I said, “I’m not talking to that bastard.”
How could I explain to him the raging inferno of emotions I was barely holding down? You didn’t need to be a psychotherapist to know that sooner or later things would break free.
Now it was Thien’s turn to look conflicted. I could sense his loyalty was wavering again and there was a touch of embarrassment to his expression. He looked on the verge of telling me some secret, but he hesitated.
“Fucking spit it out,” I said.
Finally he simply said, “Ellie, seriously, you have to talk to him!”
“I’m not fucking talking to him. Let’s get ready to release her in the next couple of days.”
Twenty minutes later, the copter came down on the rooftop pad. There had been no alarm.
“Come up and meet him, Ellie,” said Thien from the command room.
Instead, I fled down the stairs to the thylacine’s compound, my exoskeleton humming and cranking. Above, I heard them descending from the roof and Thien greeting them. Then my exoskeleton slowed down; the batteries were draining again.
I begged the universe to keep them running one final hour.
“Ellie! Come on up!” cried Thien.
There was only one thing to do. I grabbed the carrier and slid open the glass enclosure. Benjamin yawned with anxiety and retreated to her nest. The surrogate devil charged towards me, spitting and hissing.
Trying not to panic, I placed the carrier’s door against the nest and opened its roof. Benjamin pressed against a corner and emitted one of those low keening sounds. I gently coaxed her back through its door and into the carrier. I slid the door back down and pulled it towards the enclosure entrance. The devil circled around, baring her teeth angrily.
Any moment, the enforcers would be on us. They’d kill Benjamin and stun me. Grimley would look down laughing.
Slamming my hand against the pad on the door to the garage, I dragged the carrier out into the darkness. With each step, my exoskeleton was slowing down. Any moment it would whir to a halt. The cold Tasmanian air drifted in from the darkness. Clouds covered the sky. The forest was only hulking black shapes against a greater blackness.
I dragged the carrier out onto the crest. Each step seemed to take an eternity. I moved like a windup toy, slowly humming to a halt. The exoskeleton stopped altogether about ten feet down the steep slope.
I unshackled myself from it and collapsed to the cold ground. Dragging myself across the hard earth, twigs and rocks scraped my skin. Reaching up, I slid open the carrier’s door but Benjamin wouldn’t come out. She was cowering against the back of the carrier, small and young, pregnant and vulnerable. Was she too young to be taken from her mother? Had she learned to hunt well enough?
“Please come out,” I said gently, trying to soothe her.
I pulled myself closer to the cage door and she let out that terrifying guttural growl. When I gently took hold of her torso, her jaws snapped shut and pain shot through my arm.
Footsteps echoed from the garage. The enforcers were coming. Any moment I’d hear their orders. Guns would rise. They’d shoot Benjamin, since they knew no better.
Desperate, I yanked her from the carriage, far too violently, and rolled onto my back. She continued to growl. The pain sparked up my arm like lightning. Her claws scratched at my ribs.
I pushed her down the slope towards the forest.
Mercifully, she released my arm and padded about ten meters away. The growl stopped.
“Go!” I yelled, but she simply looked back from the pitchy darkness, her eyes like phosphorescent orbs.
Then Grimley was above me. I felt another presence behind us, but I dared not look back. I couldn’t bear to see the gun.
A click. The loading of a bullet.
“She’s really beautiful, isn’t she?” said Grimley.
“Don’t shoot her,” I begged.
“Shoot her?” Grimley sounded puzzled.
Another click. I turned to see Thien with his SLR camera, taking some final photos. When I turned back, Benjamin was gone, disappeared into the forest like a ghost. A minute later a haunting howl went up. Then everything was silent again.