“You gave them pain. They’re animals and that’s what they’ve always been, no matter how you’ve twisted their limbs and minds. They’ll get their revenge.”
The monkey tapped the block against the bars of his cage. Father turned back to his note-taking.
“Yet you insist on deluding yourself,” I continued. “You think yourself safe because . . . why? A few door latches?”
He slammed down his tablet. The monkey screeched and hid in the corner of its cage. But I didn’t flinch. I smiled. This was what I wanted.
A fight.
Faster than I could react, Father grabbed my wrist and splayed my hand on the table. My first instinct was to pull away, but I realized he wasn’t planning on striking me.
“The human hand,” he said in that steady voice he used for lectures, “is what most separates us from the animals, did you know that?”
His voice was calm, and yet I detected a ripple beneath it, like the water beasts swimming below the ocean’s surface. A chill tiptoed up my spine, one vertebra at a time. He traced his fountain pen, slowly, along the length of each of my fingers, leaving thick black lines. “The four lateral fingers are extensions of an animal’s primary phalanges. We hardly need Mr. Darwin to tell us that—it’s evident when comparing the musculature of any mammal, human or otherwise.”
He tapped my thumb with the sharp tip of his pen. “But the opposable thumb—ah, there’s the secret. The distal phalanx is attached to the wrist by a mobile metacarpus, giving the thumb unique properties. The ability to clutch objects—weapons, tools. To climb. To build. Why, even to hold a fountain pen.”
The precise black lines he drew along my skin radiated from the wrist to each knuckle, an anatomical diagram written on my hand. Fingers were so important to a surgeon. It was little wonder that Father was obsessed with the hand, the fingers—even going so far as to base his own safety on cleverly designed latches instead of locks.
“Without the thumb, animals are simply mindless beasts, unable to advance mentally due to their limited physiology. Which is why they’ll never get into the compound. We are perfectly safe as long as the opposable thumb eludes them. And the next stage of evolution shouldn’t happen for, oh, a hundred thousand years.”
His words sounded so logical. It might have been easy to believe him if I didn’t know he was utterly mad. He’d assumed the beasts couldn’t get in over the roof or break through the gate, yet they’d done both. He just didn’t want to hear it. Montgomery had warned me—Father would never admit to his mistakes.
My splayed hand began to shake. I curled my fingers inward, no longer wanting to be part of his lecture. His arrogance was going to kill him. Maybe all of us.
“They took Montgomery,” I said like a slap, wanting him to feel as much pain as the rest of us.
His dark eyes snapped to mine. He let go of my wrist. “What?”
“They dragged him into the jungle. He was bleeding.”
He set down the fountain pen, fingers trembling slightly. He looked around at the blocks, the monkey, as if seeing it all for the first time. A flicker of humanity showed in the look on his face, the way he wiped a hand over his whiskers. He stood. “Which ones?”
“Creatures in the water.”
“Damn!” The force made me jump. I took a step back, sensing his madness roiling like a storm. He grabbed his canvas jacket from a hook on the wall and removed a revolver from a cabinet. “This is your fault,” he snapped, struggling into the jacket. “You bewitched him! Everything was fine before you came. I never wanted a girl. Montgomery was lowborn, but at least he was male; at least he could reason, not like some hysterical female. I’d just as soon you’d died with your consumptive mother and left me in peace!”
I blinked. My mind was strangely calm, strangely clear, and yet my body was shaking. “How did you know Mother died of consumption? The doctor’s report only said a prolonged illness.”
Father’s eyes narrowed. He spun the revolver’s cylinder into place, snapping the bullets into their chambers “I know because Montgomery was there on a supply trip six months before she died. He sent Balthasar back with a letter telling me to come. Those quack doctors couldn’t save her, and he knew I could.”
A slow anger uncoiled inside me, weaving between my ribs, plucking my tendons like piano strings. “But you didn’t come.”
“Of course not. I had work here.”
“But you could have. You could have saved her.”
He waved his hand. “Didn’t you hear me, girl? I had work to do. Typical flawed reasoning of a woman, to place mortal needs above timeless research.” He straightened his jacket. “I’m going to the village. He’s either there or torn into pieces on the jungle floor.” He left the laboratory, leaving me alone.
He’s mad, I told myself. He isn’t well. And yet I didn’t feel any pity. He could have saved my mother but he didn’t. My fingers curled into fists. I looked at the monkey clutching the block, and knew I was about to do something terrible.
Maybe I was a little mad, too.
Forty
MY CHEST WAS THUMPING, but not with fear. With a dark thrill that snaked up my skin, pouring into my nose and mouth like smoke. Consuming me. Controlling me.
I wove my fingers between the bars of the monkey’s cage. Father said he wasn’t going to operate on this one. He had a new technique—cellular replacement. He intended to change the monkey from the inside out. But you couldn’t destroy the animal spirit. The monkey would always be an animal.