“The woman’s Doctor Dance,” Boyle offered. “The victim.”
“Yes,” said Carnegie, watching the screens intently, “I recognize her. How long does this preparation go on for?”
“Quite a while. Most of it’s unedifying.”
“Well, get to the edifying stuff, then.”
“Fast forward,” Boyle said. The technician obliged, and the actors on the three screens became squeaking comedians. “Wait!” said Boyle. “Back up a short way.” Again, the technician did as instructed. “There!” said Boyle. “Stop there. Now run on at normal speed.” The action settled back to its natural pace. “This is where it really begins, sir.”
Carnegie had come to the end of his hot chocolate. He put his finger into the soft sludge at the bottom of the cup, delivering the sickly-sweet dregs to his tongue. On the screens Doctor Dance had approached the subject with a syringe, was now swabbing the crook of his elbow, and injecting him. Not for the first time since his visit to the Hume Laboratories did Carnegie wonder precisely what they did at the establishment. Was this kind of procedure de rigueur in pharmaceutical research? The implicit secrecy of the experiment-late at night in an otherwise deserted building-suggested not. And there was that imperative on the title card-“Restricted.” What they were watching had clearly never been intended for public viewing.
“Are you comfortable?” a man off camera now inquired. The subject nodded. His glasses had been removed and he looked slightly bemused without them. An unremarkable face, thought Carnegie; the subject-as yet unnamed-was neither Adonis nor Quasimodo. He was receding slightly, and his wispy, dirty-blond hair touched his shoulders.
“I’m fine, Doctor Welles,” he replied to the off-camera questioner.
“You don’t feel hot at all? Sweaty?”
“Not really,” the guinea pig replied, slightly apologetically. “1 feel ordinary.”
That you are, Carnegie thought; then to Boyle: “Have you been through the tapes to the end?”
“No, sir,” Boyle replied. “I thought you’d want to see them first. I only ran them as far as the injection.”
“Any word from the hospital on Doctor Welles?”
“At the last call he was still comatose.”
Carnegie grunted and returned his attention to the screens. Following the burst of action with the injection the tapes now settled into nonactivity: the three cameras fixed on their shortsighted subject with beady stares, the torpor occasionally interrupted by an inquiry from Welles as to the subject’s condition. It remained the same. After three or four minutes of this eventless study even his occasional blinks began to assume major dramatic significance.
“Don’t think much of the plot,” the technician commented. Carnegie laughed; Boyle looked discomforted. Two or three more minutes passed in a similar manner.
‘This doesn’t look too hopeful,” Carnegie said. ”Run through it at speed, will you?”
The technician was about to obey when Boyle said: “Wait.” Carnegie glanced across at the man, irritated by his intervention, and then back at the screens. Something was happening. A subtle transformation had overtaken the insipid features of the subject. He had begun to smile to himself and was sinking down in his chair as if submerging his gangling body in a warm bath. His eyes, which had so far expressed little but affable indifference, now began to flicker closed, and then, once closed, opened again. When they did so there was a quality in them not previously visible, a hunger that seemed to reach out from the screen and into the calm of the inspector’s office.
Carnegie put down his chocolate cup and approached the screens. As he did so the subject also got up out of his chair and walked toward the glass of the chamber, leaving two of the cameras’ ranges. The third still recorded him, however, as he pressed his face against the window, and for a moment the two men faced each other through layers of glass and time, seemingly meeting each other’s gaze.
The look on the man’s face was critical now, the hunger was rapidly outgrowing sane control. Eyes burning, he laid his lips against the chamber window and kissed it, his tongue working against the glass.
“What in Christ’s name is going on?” Carnegie said.
A prattle of voices had begun on the soundtrack. Doctor Welles was vainly asking the testee to articulate his feelings while Dance called off figures from the various monitoring instruments. It was difficult to hear much clearly-the din was further supplemented by an eruption of chatter from the caged monkeys-but it was evident that the readings coming through from the man’s body were escalating. His face was flushed, his skin gleamed with a sudden sweat He resembled a martyr with the tinder at his feet freshly lit, wild with a fatal ecstasy. He stopped French-kissing the window, tearing off the electrodes at his temples and the sensors from his arms and chest. Dance, her voice now registering alarm, called out for him to stop. Then she moved across the camera’s view and out again crossing, Carnegie presumed, to the chamber door.