Part 9
Blossom was on edge all evening. Whilst she and her sisters sat in the living room, she made sure that the door was left open so that she could see if the Professor came out of his laboratory. Whilst Buttercup and Bubbles watched TV, her thoughts were on the Professor and what he had said, and what she had said.
When the clock ticked around to 7:30, she stood up.
'Right, girls, time for bed!'
'What?' exclaimed Buttercup, outraged at the suggestion.
'It's 7:30. Bedtime.'
'Since when? We never go to bed at this time!'
'Only because the Professor lets us stay up later, sometimes. He's not here, so we should go up at the proper time.'
'You must be kidding! He's not here, so we can stay up as long as we like!'
'Buttercup, don't argue,' snapped Blossom, angrily.
The ferocity of this retort was so startling, and the furious glint in Blossom's eyes so unexpected, that Buttercup found herself obeying almost against her will. Sulkily, muttering to herself, she went upstairs. Blossom took a last look at the door to the lab before she to went to bed, but it was firmly shut and there was no sign that the Professor would be coming out.
Blossom lay awake most of the night. Normally, if he didn't tuck them into bed, the Professor at least looked in on the girls when he came up to bed himself, but Blossom heard him climbing the stairs well past midnight and listened to his footsteps pass the bedroom door, and heard the soft thump of his own bedroom door shutting. Her heart sank even further. Angry tears welled up in her eyes. Why was he doing this? What had she done? Even if he was upset at her, there was no need take it out on Buttercup and Bubbles. He might at least have said goodnight to them. She stifled with her pillow the little sobs of pain and frustration that she could not suppress from convulsing her small body; she didn't want to wake Bubbles and Buttercup, didn't want them to see her like this, even though her instinct was naturally to turn to them for support. As the night wore on, she began to be less concerned about what she had done to annoy the Professor than about his behaviour towards her. It wasn't fair! She began to think about retaliation. If he wanted to be like that, then so could she! For a while, she lay there with the covers pulled up over her head tormenting herself with imagined ways that she might snub the Professor. How many situations did she conjure up where he needed her and she ignored him? How many times did she turn her back on him as he pleaded for her forgiveness? Her chin quivering with anger and frustration, she faced him down a dozen times with a haughty expression and the satisfaction of knowing that she was in the right and he was hurting as he had hurt her. But Blossom found there was no satisfaction in hurting the Professor. The more slights and pain she inflicted upon him in her imaginary world, the more unutterably lonely and empty she felt herself. Tears trickled down her face and wet her pillow.
Bubbles made pancakes for breakfast the following morning. Blossom was terribly tired and subdued, her eyes bloodshot with lack of sleep and with crying. The girls had their breakfast virtually in silence, and there was no sign of the Professor. Just as they prepared to leave for school, however, there came the sound of footsteps descending the stairs, and Professor Utonium entered the kitchen. He was wearing a dressing gown and it was clear that he had just got up. His hair was lank and unkempt, his face unshaven, and his eyes were as red as Blossom's.
Blossom continued to prepare for school, refusing even to turn round and acknowledge the Professor's presence. Utonium stood just inside the doorway and looked at each of the girls in turn, his eyes lingering on Blossom's back as she placed the dirty dishes into the sink.
'Girls,' he said, 'I need to talk to you.'
Blossom's heart began to pound. She turned, to find the Professor looking directly at her. The expression on his face was one of worry, and there was in his tired eyes almost a pleading look that touched Blossom's heart and evaporated in an instant all her foolish ideas of cold-shouldering him.
'We were just going to school,' she said, smiling.
The Professor rubbed his eyes and massaged his temples with the forefinger and thumb of one hand, as if he were suffering from a terrible headache.
'I really must speak to you,' he said, in a hoarse voice, 'I'll give you a note to give to Ms. Keane.'
He pulled one of the kitchen chairs out from under the table and slumped down on it. The girls sat down too.
'I haven't slept all night,' he said, 'Actually, I've been worried for several days. Girls, I have to tell you the truth about that creature you killed yesterday. You see... I knew all about it.'
'Were you doing research, like Mr Matthews?' asked Bubbles.
'No, Bubbles, I wasn't doing any research,' replied the Professor wearily, 'It all started a long time ago.'
He paused, staring at the table. The girls waited. Professor Utonium took a deep breath.
'I did a lot of work on the ageing process,' he said, glancing very briefly at each of the girls, 'I wanted to see if I could halt it, even reverse it. I believed I'd made a breakthrough. I was certain that I had the key to allowing people to live many times as long as normal, possibly even extending their lives indefinitely. It was a very exciting idea.'
It had indeed been a thrilling time for Professor Utonium. It had been shortly after he arrived in Townsville that his earlier researchers had begun to bear fruit. His experiments with flies had been a mixed success, some of the insects living ten times their natural lifespan or more, some being destroyed by genetic defects, but they had led him to what he believed was a fundamental breakthrough. Many months of puzzling over data until his head hurt, of doodling equations and chemical structures, of reading research paper after research paper in search of inspiration, had culminated in one of those eureka moments when suddenly everything was as clear as day and the Professor cursed himself for missing something so obvious that a child might have seen it. He remembered that moment, when he had literally jumped for joy, skipping around his lab like a child. He had been so excited, so elated, that he had gone out, for the first time in weeks, and treated himself to a meal in a restaurant.
It had been on the way back from that meal that the Professor had bumped into Simon for the first time. Striding along the sidewalk, his head filled with the words of the paper that he was to unleash upon a bedazzled world, he had initially ignored the scruffy individual who mumbled at him as he passed. However, Utonium was feeling good about himself and about the world, for the first time in a very long while, and a foolish sort of benevolence caused him to pause and apologise. He had been in one of those moods that he always regretted afterwards, when he was stupid enough to be friendly to people and which always seem to end with him looking small and the rest of the world laughing at his expense. There had been no danger of that from Simon, though. Just to have someone acknowledge his existence had been a rare privilege for the beggar. Taking his customary subservient stance, staring bent-headed at the pavement, he had plied the Professor in a slurred monotone for the price of a room at a nearby hostel, and Utonium, in an excess of goodwill, had offered to stand him a drink at a bar that was just across the street.
It had only been later on that, with some shame, Utonium had admitted the truth to himself: he had just needed someone to talk to. Oddly, it was that necessity, rather than the fact that this total stranger had been the only person in the world that he could turn to, that caused his shame. It was a weakness, like the sentimentalism that had also played its part in prompting the Professor to take the beggar for a drink. He had been moved, in a somewhat superficial way, by the man's plight and it had pleased him to think even better of himself by performing this small, unasked-for act of kindness. The upshot of it was, that the professor and the beggar had found themselves passing the time of day over a few glasses of beer. Simon had been gratitude itself and could not praise the Professor enough, and Utonium had patronised the man, sagely lamenting the iniquities of a society that could leave a man homeless and penniless. One beer had led to another and Utonium had awoken the following morning with the knowledge that he had allowed the Beggar to sleep on his couch.
The Professor had tip-toed downstairs nursing a terrible hangover and a consciousness of his own stupidity. He counted himself lucky not to have had his throat cut in his sleep. He had certainly expected to find his house ransacked. Instead, he had merely found a note written in a childish hand thanking him profusely for his hospitality. It had made Professor Utonium feel very, very pleased with himself.
A few days later, late one wet evening, there had come a ring at Professor Utonium's doorbell and Simon had been there, looking very bedraggled. He had been turned out of his room at the hostel, he had nowhere to go and he would never normally have presumed upon the Professor's hospitality again and he would be very content to sleep on the Professor's garage floor, if that was convenient. Having had time to reflect on what he perceived to be his prior foolishness, the Professor had by now ceased to feel good about his generosity and looked back upon his previous encounter with the beggar with some embarrassment. He now felt that he had been acting out of character, that his friendliness and generosity had been out of proportion, that they made him look feeble and gullible. He had not, therefore, been best pleased to be reminded of the incident. Nevertheless, it was impossible for him to turn the man away, so with a feeling that he was perhaps getting into something rather deeper than he liked, he had invited Simon into the house and made a bed on the couch for a second time, with many subtle hints that this was for one night only.
Simon was a very simple fellow, little more than a child, mentally, and he showed such an affecting gratitude and awe of the Professor that Utonium could not help but feel very good in his company. After so long with the world seeming to be against him at every turn, Utonium bathed in the comfort of Simon's unquestioning adoration even though a small voice within his head had tried to point out that the beggar's compliments were worthless to him.
'The upshot was, I took Simon on as my first lab assistant,' said the Professor.
'Before Jojo?' asked Buttercup.
'Long before Jojo,' replied the Professor.
Like Jojo who succeeded him, Simon's role had really been as a companion, not an assistant. Indeed, like Jojo, he did not have the intelligence to carry out any other than the simplest of tasks. What he did have though, was a blind faith in the Professor.
'I don't think many people had shown him much kindness in all his life,' said Professor Utonium, 'He believed in me, and I did a dreadful thing. I took advantage of his gratitude - and of his simple nature.'
'You asked him to be in one of your experiments,' said Bubbles, perceptively.
'It was worse than that, Bubbles,' replied the Professor, 'I didn't ask him; I just kept saying how difficult it was working with animals and how you could never rely on the results, how they don't always translate to humans. It was underhand. I wanted him to volunteer - and he did.'
'What happened?' asked Blossom, although she already knew the answer.
What had happened had been horrifying. At first, everything seemed to have gone to plan. Simon had spent about a day under sedation following the Professor's treatment, and all his vital signs were normal. It was only when he awoke that it became clear that something strange had happened. The lively individual who had volunteered for the Professor's experiment had been replaced by morose character who refused either to speak or move.
'When I touched his skin, it was like touching stone,' continued Professor Utonium, 'Every muscle in his body seemed to be tensed to its limit. That was disturbing, but it was his face that really worried me. Just like the rest of him, it was solid and unmoving - except for the eyes. His eyes followed me about the lab. Sometimes I'd turn around suddenly and he'd be watching like some animal stalking its prey. It was terrifying. I didn't know what do.'
The Professor had been on his own. He could hardly have taken the unfortunate Simon to hospital. For several days he had tried to break the terrible spell that seemed to have cast a shadow over his erstwhile assistant, then one morning he had entered the lab to find Simon gone.
'Not only that,' said Professor Utonium to the girls, 'he had broken into my cupboards and there were several bottles missing. I can't be sure, but I think it's likely that he ate the chemicals they contained. I went out looking for him but there was no trace. I looked in all of the places where I thought he might have gone - hostels, cheap hotels, all the places where down-and-outs might be found, but he wasn't there. After about a week, though, some of the people there started to mention disappearances. These people – vagrants – weren't in the places they'd expect to find them. Something told me there was a connection. No…'
The Professor leant on the kitchen table, his head in his hands.
'No, that's not true. I knew there was a connection. I knew that my experiment had gone wrong.'
Blossom looked at Professor Utonium. He seemed to be falling apart. There had been numerous occasions when she and her sisters had had to rescue him from dangerous and often terrifying situations, but he had never been like this. He had always managed, in her eyes at least, to keep an air of inner strength about him, a strength that came from his intense sense of purpose, which was to understand and ultimately to control the forces that he saw around him and which impinged upon him. That desire to understand seemed to give him a power and a dignity in any situation. Yet, looking at him now, Blossom could see nothing of that. What struck her most was how suddenly old he looked. She looked at the little scene - the Professor slumped in his chair, Bubbles looking on with bright eyes, ready to cry at any minute, Buttercup in a confusion of emotions - with strange detachment. The Professor's age had never struck her before, he had always seemed so dynamic, so youthful in his outlook.
This isn't the Professor, she thought.
'What about the little girl?' asked Buttercup.
The Professor gave a great sigh and seemed almost to deflate before the girls' eyes, slumping even further in his chair.
'That was much later,' he replied, after a few seconds, 'I tried... I searched...'
'Why didn't you tell someone?' asked Blossom, coldly.
'I thought I could stop him. I did stop him! After the girl went missing I finally tracked him down, in the sewers. I realised that I could use his modified chemical structure to trail him. I formed a theory that it was a shortage of a particular chemical in his body that was causing the craving that prompted him to attack people. By supplying that chemical to him, the attacks stopped. By putting a small quantity of the chemical into the sewers every week, I was able to keep him under control. After a while, I found that the chemical was no longer being taken so I thought he had either died or gone away. I thought I'd heard the last of him. Then last week, there was a little article in the newspaper that mentioned more disappearances. More beggars and drop-outs – the kind of people that Simon knew. I was afraid… I think I knew that he'd come back. More deaths, more killings… '
The Professor looked up at the girls.
'You see, I've had this on my conscience for a long time,' he said, 'In a way, I suppose it was fitting that you brought it to an end.'
'That Mr Matthews knew more about it than he said,' observed Buttercup, 'I thought there was something fishy about him!'
'Yes, replied the Professor, 'I think he did. Somehow he must have found out my involvement. Perhaps he was able to get more out of the creature than he told us. '
Slowly, the Professor got to his feet.
'I think I'm going to have a bath now, girls,' he said, 'I'm really rather tired. I might see you at the school, later,' he added, 'I have to talk to Ms. Keane. Have a nice time and look after yourselves.'
He turned very quickly and left the room in a hurry. Bubbles and Buttercup looked at one another and then at Blossom. Blossom was silent.
It's not the Professor, she thought. This isn't what I want him to be. My Professor doesn't do things like that. My Professor… But he wasn't her Professor. He was just Professor Utonium, someone she hardly knew. The implications of what he had said were frightening, horrifying, disgusting. For a moment she felt like screaming: "I'm a five-year-old! You made me a five-year-old, you bastard, and you give me things like this to deal with!"
Shocked, Blossom looked across at her sisters. They were still looking at her with a stunned expression on their faces. They hadn't noticed anything. Of course, they hadn't heard what she had thought. She had heard criminals use far worse language than that a thousand times, but she would never have dreamt of saying such a thing herself. Until now. What was happening to her?
'I don't feel like going to school,' said Buttercup.
'Me neither,' said Bubbles.
'We have to go,' replied Blossom, her voice sounding to her sisters strangely mechanical, 'I think the Professor wants some time to himself.'
'Yeah, I suppose,' said Buttercup.
'I think he thinks Mr. Matthews is going to tell the police,' said Blossom, still in the flat, distant tone, 'That's why he wants to talk to Ms. Keane. He wants to talk about us – about what's going to happen to us if he gets put in prison.'
Bubbles began to cry, very quietly.
'I don't want him to go to prison,' she whispered, through her tears.
Blossom wasn't at all sure what she wanted.
'We've… got each other,' she said, although it didn't sound enough.
As Buttercup opened the front door so that the three of them could start on their journey to school, Bubbles looked at Blossom.
'Blossom,' she said, her voice so choked that her sisters had difficulty understanding her, 'The Professor created that monster. That means…'
'Don't say it, Bubbles,' said Blossom, 'Leave it.'
'Leave what?' asked Buttercup, frowning.
'Nothing,' replied Blossom, 'Just Bubbles being silly.'
As the girls flew towards Pokey Oaks, Blossom couldn't leave it. In all the horror of the Professor's story, what it had revealed about the Professor himself, what he was capable of, his deception, was the final insult: what he had done to them, the girls, what he had turned them into. The Professor had created the monster. That made it their own brother. They had killed their own brother.