There was an air of peace in the lab when Marcellus entered it the next morning, quite different to the charged sense of waiting that had pervaded it on every previous occasion.
They were sleeping in the female's – no, the woman's cage, he corrected himself. And until he could arrange things differently, it was her home. She didn't stir, but over her shoulder alert gray eyes watched him, waking instantly to vigilance.
"Hi, guys," he said quietly, as he always did.
There was no reply. He didn't expect one.
He switched on the computer and all the rest of the equipment. Then he collected the litter-trays. Body wastes could provide information about the patients' physical condition, and he went through the tests methodically, as he did every morning, recording the results; he had been waiting for their hormones to stabilize before he began trials of one of the drugs that had been recommended as having reliable, if unspectacular, results.
The first results were promising. He had believed all along that stress was skewing their natural capacity to recover. He had been keeping interference to a minimum, doing as little as possible to distress them while collecting the necessary samples. Now he planned to establish a routine, carefully giving them some sense of security; keeping things as predictable as possible for them, even down to a half-hour reading before he went home for the night. Maybe even with the cage doors open, to let them get comfortable with him.
Already he was seeing real progress. The difference in the stress hormones they were secreting had dropped quite perceptibly. Everything else he checked was within acceptable parameters.
Until–
His heart sank.
He ran the test again. The result didn't change.
He looked over at the joined cage. The woman, too, had woken up now. She was staring at him fearfully. Over her shoulder, the man watched him. The gray gaze had narrowed, as if he suspected something was wrong. His uninjured arm clasped his mate's body possessively.
Marcellus sighed, and put his head into his hands. He and Joelle….
Well. No need to worry about that just yet. They'd only been trying for a couple of months. Everyone said it could take a while.
He contacted Harris. Normally he never even thought of the man if he could avoid it, but this was something that couldn't be just swept under the carpet. It wasn't like the problem was going to go away if they ignored it.
The situation needed few words.
"Deal with it." The heavy face on the vid-phone was unmoved. "This is a Government department, not a damned nursery."
He'd been expecting some such reaction, but even so the brutality of it appalled him. The decision was made just like that?
"They're not animals," he said at last. "They're human beings."
The faint, grim smile appeared. "Try telling them that."
"It doesn't matter what they think," he said hotly. "It's what I know. And what they'll know sooner or later."
"They'll know what we allow them to know. I assure you, Doctor Grenham, the people that this process produces aren't the bleeding-heart type. Their lives won't allow them any space for complications like family life. They'll destroy everything they touch. So for their sakes as much as for ours, just follow your orders." He glanced down briefly, clearly doing something on his computer. "By the way, I'm sending you a file that has some of the additional information you asked for, including their first names. I don't feel any more would be appropriate." When he looked up again his voice was hard. "If it makes you feel better, we have no way of knowing whether a child would inherit the parents' mental condition. If it did, it might well be permanent and incurable. Not much of a life, confined in an asylum. So think about it, Doctor."
Without further words, Harris cut the connection.
So think about it, Doctor.
He thought about it.
He thought about it all that day, and most of the next. He thought about it when he was in bed with his wife, and had to plead a fictitious headache; luckily it wasn't one of the 'hot days'. He thought about it when Joelle got a phone call inviting her to a baby shower for one of the women at her place of work. He thought about it when he saw pregnant women in the streets, and mothers pushing prams. He thought about it when he went to the store at lunchtime and the guy in front of him had a baby in some kind of sling, wrapped cozily against the cold as it lay against his chest.
He thought about it when the early success in the lab was followed by unexpected setbacks. He was quite certain by now that both of the patients understood what he wanted, but they steadfastly refused to co-operate. When he approached them they both snarled and backed away from him. When the cage doors were left open during the reading sessions, they both stayed obdurately in their prison. He suspected that this was actually a sign of progress – they recognized that they'd started to establish some kind of a bond with him and were denying it even to themselves. Nevertheless, it could just as well be what it looked like, and although he had almost infinite patience with his research programs he was aware that the man who read his reports would be looking for more than suspicions of progress.
So think about it, Doctor.
He thought about it when food was put onto the tables and the male patient – Malcolm – climbed up via the chair and ate it crouching and growling. The female – Helen – refused to climb, so he did the same in her hut and carried the food down to her in his mouth and fed it to her piece by piece.
He thought about it as he typed in the requisition for what he needed from the pharmaceutical department, a week after the discovery.
He thought about it when both of the patients were lying inert in their cage later that day, stunned by a low-dose shot that would only put them out for an hour or so.
He thought about it as he helped one of his orderlies sponge down Malcolm's motionless body, getting rid of the encrusted dirt on it. The wolfskin had been cut off carefully and would be replaced, on top of a set of clean Starfleet blues; it was long past time they gave him a little dignity.
He thought about it as he deftly cut short the long, broken nails and ran a clipper through the matted hair. Dark locks tumbled on to the bio-bed, surprisingly soft.
Months of beard growth had to be removed carefully. Without it, the guy looked strangely young and vulnerable. He had a narrow, clever face, with high cheekbones and the suggestion of a dimple in his chin.
Two female orderlies cleaned up Helen behind a privacy curtain. Naturally she didn't need a shave, so instead they washed her hair and brushed it. Despite it having gone unwashed for so long, it was in surprisingly good condition; but then he knew that hair, like the rest of the human body, had evolved to look after itself without the benefit of shampoos and conditioners and all the rest of the things considered mandatory by the modern hygiene regimen. To complete the transformation, they depilated her legs too.
Taking the blood samples was usually the last thing before the patients were returned to their cages.
Tonight, it wasn't.
"I'm so sorry, Helen," he said softly as the hypospray touched her skin.
She was still too thin, but she had a pretty, heart-shaped face and a kissable mouth. Naturally she wasn't a patch on Joelle in his eyes, but dressed properly and well-groomed, he could see she'd be a stunner.
He thumbed the button. The clear liquid passed into her body with a high-pressure hiss.
Maybe it was for the best, after all.
When he turned around, he realized the stun was starting to wear off. Malcolm's eyes had half-opened. Just for a second, something looked out of them that might have been human pain. Next moment, however, the familiar hatred welled up. Worse, there was accusation: We almost trusted you.
You don't know the half of it yet, buddy.
It had been for the best. He believed that. When at last he packed up for the day, leaving the silent lab with its two hating occupants in their now separate cages, he still believed it. He believed it when he got home and tucked into the dinner Joelle had waiting, and he believed it when they went to the cinema to see the latest blockbuster.
When they went to bed, however, he still had a headache. It was so bad it was making him cry. Joelle leaned across him, concerned and loving. Strands of her long blonde hair dropped lightly across his chest as she kissed his nose, and she said that if it wasn't better by tomorrow she was calling the doc, because everyone knew doctors made the worst patients. She got him a couple of pills and a drink of water, and sat on the edge of the bed dabbing his forehead with a damp cool facecloth; to help the pain go away, she said.
It was a nice idea. He loved her for having it.
But it didn't work.
It didn't work at all.
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