“All your animals are asleep?”
“Not asleep. In suspended animation. Thus they do not age, and will be in excellent condition when they are needed.”
“But they’re not any fun. I don’t think I’ll stay here.”
“Please do. At least until you’ve seen my larger beasts.”
“Well, all right.”
Beyond the rabbits and guinea pigs there were cages of baboons, each one bigger than the one before. Garrity Three, pointed nose pointed up, lectured on. “These are not for tests, but for organ transplants, in this instance, hearts. You’ll note they are graded in size to match my growth. Some, I’ve already outgrown. My father will dispose of those when he gets around to it. Now something special.”
He guided her to a cage containing a gorilla a dozen times bigger than she was. He was scary. Even asleep, his sharp teeth showed.
“This is my favorite, Cardiac Emperor, with my adult heart.”
He wasn’t Melissa’s favorite. She went on ahead.
“I wish you wouldn’t hurry me.” Peter caught up and glared at her. She was looking at a lot of monkeys in separate cages. After a moment’s silence, he said the monkeys were for endocrine glands. Then he grabbed her arm and pulled her on.
“This is my armadillo. It has something to do with leprosy, should I contract that hideous disease. Next, my oryx, my spare liver. Where are you going?”
In a cage further on, Melissa had spotted a huge and beautiful tiger. The oryx couldn’t hope to hold her.
The tiger was the prettiest animal she’d ever seen, prettier than Henrietta. His fine orange-and-black fur gleamed like silk. There was a smile of happy peace on his face. She ached to wake him up and tell him how beautiful he was.
“I call him Shere Khan. He is here for my kidneys.”
This lovely tiger was to be cut up to replace this nasty boy’s kidneys? It can’t be, she thought. It can’t be!
In cat talk, she thought, tiger, tiger, I won’t let it be!
She wasn’t hearing Peter. Suddenly he was right in her ear. “I said, would you like to see the control panel to wake the animals up?”
Her daddy’d told her controlling control panels is power.
She said: “Yes, I would. Please.”
Garrity Three marched her to the console in the middle of the hall. It was like fiye hundred entertainment centers all in one.
As she bent for a closer look, she sensed Garrity Three eyeing her up and down like that surgeon had in the hutchery.
Garrity Three said, “If you will pull up your skirts and show me your underclothing, I will show you how the controls work.”
Backing away, Melissa was half minded to stamp a foot, tell the boy what she thought of him, and leave.
She remembered what her daddy’d said about control panels. Would he mind if she showed a little something to see how this one worked?
Surely not. Besides, she had on really pretty panties.
She pulled up her skirt a tiny bit, not giving him any big show.
“More,” said Peter.
She hoisted her skirt a few millimeters further.
That was enough, apparently. He punched in an access number on the console. Melissa watched and remembered. Everything lit up.
“Would you wake one little rabbit, Peter, just for me?”
Peter said he’d better not.
Melissa swirled around, skirts flaring. The boy peered through his thick glasses. “Well, all right. Perhaps just one.”
Melissa watched. SELECT. RABBIT ONE. REVIVE. Nothing to it. No more complicated than an ordinary computer. Less, really.
Noises came from the first rabbit cage. She ran to it, and was just in time to see tubes and wires lifting away from the rabbit. In seconds, it wasn’t a wax bunny any more, it was a living, breathing creature, staggering to its feet. Then it was bouncing around in its cage, frisky as Henrietta.
“Damn,” said Peter. “I forgot to punch in the tranque code. They have to wake up quickly. One never knows how much time one has in an emergency. But they’re supposed to be tranquilized until they get to the surgical room.”
Hoping to learn the tranque code, Melissa went back to the console. He didn’t punch it in. Instead, he said, “If you will take off your panties, I will wake up another rabbit.”
“What a bad little boy you are!” This time Melissa did stamp her foot. “I wouldn’t dream of doing any such thing.”
She was out of there, leaving Peter blinking behind his glasses.
Next day, at school lunch break, Peter ran up to Melissa, went “Nyah, nyah! Nasty little fat girl!” and ran away again. She was tempted to chase him, but didn’t. Other kids didn’t gang up on her like in some schools. Maybe they liked Peter about like she did.
Peter’s brief visit set her thinking about the he she’d told her daddy. It always made him feel good to hear some rich kid had taken an interest in her, so she’d told him this nice boy, Peter Garrity, had invited her to his home. She’d not mentioned menageries, tigers, panties, any of that, just told him enough to make him feel good. He’d felt good. But it had been wrong to he to him.
That evening, her daddy came home with stuff about Garrity Two. He was VP of Medisurance “where we have our insurance,” salary in the upper six figures. She’d done well to make friends with his son.
She didn’t say what sort of friends she’d made. She did ask what Garrity Two was VP of. “Like, there’s Operations, Finance—”
“How does my precious know so much? Somebody said he’s VP, Incompetence, probably sees nobody incompetent works at Medisurance.”
Next day Melissa asked Ms. Simpson what VPs, Incompetence did.
Ms. Simpson laughed. “I’ve heard they see their company doesn’t hire smart people. Then there’s a lot of lost data, data input into wrong files, and so forth. An insurance company c an make a lot of money not paying claims until mistakes are corrected.”
It sounded just the right job for the Garrity kid’s father.
For two weeks, all went well. With a regular paycheck, there was lots of money for rent, school fees, and food. Melissa’d made no friends at school or at home. That was okay. She was fine on her own.
At school she saw the Garrity kid, but easily avoided him.
It wasn’t so easy to avoid Dr. Blackheart. Quite often she ran across him skulking in the corridors. He’d found out who she was, addressed her by name. She was no more polite than she had to be.
Suddenly everything went wrong. Everything.
After school, it rained. It was no day to visit Yo Yo and Sarah on Scuffle Street. She went straight home to the hutch.
In the hutch, a light flashed on the message machine. She pressed for the message. It was from her daddy’s work place. Her daddy was in Gimbel Majestic Hospital with severe abdominal pains.
Quickly Melissa punched up the hospital’s number. She pressed keys to let the hospital’s machine know she was inquiring about her daddy, a patient, an “Insured Temp.”
A woman came on line. She could find no record of Melissa’s daddy! Melissa begged her to search. She said she’d run the computer by her again.
Waiting, Mehssa twisted her hair in her fingers until it hurt.
The woman came back. “I’ve found your father. He’s here, classified ‘Uninsured Temp.’ The ward lists his condition as stable.”
Melissa keyed off, “uninsured temp” echoing in her ears.
She remembered what had happened to her mummy.
She was terrified for her daddy, couldn’t think straight, didn’t know what to do.
She made herself, made herself, calm down.