“The salon, miss.”
I sat up, throwing a dressing gown over my chemise, and hurried across the courtyard barefoot.
I INTERRUPTED A SULLEN tea in the salon. A few dried-out plain cakes rested untouched on the coffee table. The tea looked cold. Montgomery stood when I entered, but Father waved him back down. I glanced at Edward. No visible broken bones. At least Father hadn’t drowned him for that punch in the jaw.
“Are you feeling—?” Montgomery said, but I cut him off.
“To hell with how I’m feeling.” I folded my arms, staring at Father. “I want an explanation.”
To my satisfaction, Father closed his book. Apparently profanity had a way of making men listen. The clock ticked, slowly. Father nodded toward the leather armchair. I sank into it, gripping the armrests. Montgomery hung back near the bookshelves. Close enough to listen, far enough to distance himself.
“You think me a monster,” Father began. “Or a madman. Though I assure you, the research Montgomery and I conduct here is quite the contrary. We are pioneering the science of manipulating living forms.”
“Butchery, you mean,” I said. My gaze flickered to Montgomery, challenging him.
Father didn’t flinch. “I can’t control how a handful of ignorant boors label it.”
“And the creature on your operating table?” I snapped. “What label would it use?”
“It doesn’t think in those concepts, Juliet. It was merely a panther, used to hunting. Instead of craving flesh, it will now gather fruit and live in a society with others of its kind. I gave it intelligence. Reason.”
“Impossible. No surgery can do that.”
“My technique is not limited to the physical form. The brain, as well, can benefit from the surgical process. It’s a simple matter of mapping the mind, learning what to tweak, to stimulate, to cut out. It requires special instruments and infinitesimal patience, of course.” Father took a sip of tea.
I briefly wondered where cruelty resided in the brain. Whether you could cut it out with a scalpel. I glanced behind me, where Montgomery pretended to read a book. Had he ever tried to stop my father? Was he a prisoner here, or a willing participant?
As if he could read my thoughts, he slammed the book shut and shoved it onto a shelf. His sleeve tore on a loose nail. He pounded his balled fist on the nail as if his anger could hammer it down.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
Father smiled thinly. “The proof is right here. Balthasar, won’t you come here for a moment?”
Balthasar shuffled into the room, his hands enveloping the teakettle. Father motioned to a chair. Balthasar sat down, blinking nervously. Across the room, Montgomery’s attention focused on us. A flicker passed over his face, a memory maybe, and he smacked the shelf so hard the books rattled. Edward glanced up at the noise, but Montgomery turned and left through the door.
Coward, I thought, leaving Balthasar to face my father alone.
“Now, take Balthasar.” Father’s voice pulled me back. “One of my finer creations, even able to pass among the streets of London, though admittedly somewhat unusual with the odd slanting forehead and profusion of body hair. He speaks. He thinks. He’s capable of compassion. Why, he even carried a garden slug outside this morning so the chickens wouldn’t eat it. Didn’t you?”
Balthasar nodded.
“Tell me, Juliet, would you call this man an abomination?”
Balthasar grinned. He thought he was pleasing us. He had no notion that Father was talking about his own horrible origin. I remembered that Balthasar was the one who’d taken care of the little sloth on the Curitiba. He’d cried softly when I played Chopin on the piano.
“No,” I said gently. Then my resolve hardened. “But I can’t call him a man, either.”
“Nevertheless, a man he is,” Father argued. “A man carved and wrought from animal flesh. Don’t act so horrified, Juliet. It is merely surgery. You are no doubt familiar with some of the more common practices. Setting broken bones, amputations, stitching ruptured skin back together?”
“I am,” I answered cautiously.
“No one questions the hand of a doctor performing such procedures. No one calls it butchery—it is science, and no different from what transpires behind the door of my own laboratory. For it is surgery I perform. Grafting of skin, setting of bones. A more complex scale, mind you. There is a most fascinating procedure, you know, I have only recently perfected, wherein I separate the sternum . . .”
His explanations continued. Examples, details, complications of his work. They made my throat go dry and my mind whirl. He had really done it.
My father had played God and won.
I had so many questions, but the rush of them caught in my throat. How long did the grafting take to set? Why did he choose the human form? What did a heart split open and sewn back together look like? I shocked myself with my hunger to know.
Edward was strangely quiet, shocked by the horror of it, as I should have been. But as much as I knew I should be repulsed, my curiosity burned so brightly it made my humanity flicker and dim.
Father continued. “Balthasar, for example. He is part dog and part bear.” He traced an imaginary line along the bridge of Balthasar’s nose. “You can see the canine influence in his jaw placement, but examine these ears. Ursine.”
Montgomery’s figure filled the doorway, and my heartbeat sped. He knelt by the bookshelf with a hammer in hand. Thwack. Thwack. Each strike of his hammer made me cringe.
Thwack. Edward leaned forward, somehow able to ignore the hammering. “But what about scars?” Edward asked. “What about broken bones? Your creations don’t show any signs of surgery.”