He looked at her triumphantly.

“You too are the bastard-zone, Ms. Lin! Your art takes place where your understanding and your ignorance blur.”

Fine, she signed as she gathered her things. Whatever. Sorry I asked.

“So was I, but not any more, I think,” he replied.

Lin folded her wooden case around her stained pallet, around the remaining colourberries (she needed more, she saw) and the blocks of paste. Mr. Motley continued with his philosophical ramblings, his ruminations on mongrel theory. Lin was not listening. She tuned her antennae away from him, felt the tiny ructions and rumblings of the house, the weight of the air on the window.

I want a sky above me, she thought, not this ancient dusty brace of beams, this tarred, brittle roof. I’m walking home. Slowly. Through Brock Marsh.

Her resolution increased as her thoughts progressed.

I’ll stop at the lab and nonchalantly ask Isaac to come with me, and I’ll steal him away for a night.

Mr. Motley continued sounding.

Shut up, shut up, you spoilt child, you damn megalomaniac with your crackpot theories, thought Lin.

When she turned to sign goodbye, it was with only the faintest semblance of politeness.

Chapter Eleven

A pigeon hung cruciform on an X of darkwood on Isaac’s desk. Its head bobbed frantically from side to side, but despite its terror, it could only emit a bathetic cooing.

Its wings were pinned with thin nails driven through the tight spaces between splayed feathers and bent hard down to pinion the wingtip. The pigeon’s legs were tied to the lower quarters of the little cross. The wood beneath it was spattered with the dirty white and grey of birdshit. It spasmed and tried to shake its wings, but it was held.

Isaac loomed over it brandishing a magnifying glass and a long pen.

“Stop fucking about, you vermin,” he muttered, and prodded the bird’s shoulder with the tip of the pen. He gazed through his lens at the infinitesimal shudders that passed through the tiny bones and muscles. He scribbled without looking at the paper beneath him.

“Oy!”

Isaac looked round at Lublamai’s irritated call, and left his desk. He paced to the balcony’s edge and peered over.

“What?”

Lublamai and David were standing shoulder to shoulder on the ground floor, their arms folded. They looked like a small chorus line about to burst into song. Their faces were furrowed. There was silence for some seconds.

“Look,” began Lublamai, his voice suddenly placatory, “Isaac…We’ve always agreed that this is a place we can all do the research we want to do, no questions asked, back each other up, that sort of thing…right?”

Isaac sighed and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.

“For Jabber’s sake, boys, let’s not play old soldiers,” he said with a groan. “You don’t have to tell me we’ve been through thick and thin, or what have you, I know you’re arsed off, and I don’t blame you…”

“It smells, Isaac,” said David bluntly. “And we’re treated to the dawn chorus every minute of the day.”

As Lublamai spoke, the old construct wheeled its way uncertainly behind him. It stopped and its head rotated, its lenses taking in the two poised men. It hesitated a moment, then folded its stubby metal arms in clumsy imitation of their poses. Isaac gesticulated at it.

“Look, look, that stupid thing’s losing it! It’s got a virus! You’d better have it trashed or it’ll self-organize; you’ll be having existential arguments with your mechanical skivvy before the year’s out!”

“Isaac, don’t change the fucking subject,” said David irritably, glancing round and shoving the construct, which fell over. “We all have a bit of leeway when it comes to inconveniences, but this is pushing it.”

“All right!” Isaac threw up his hands. He looked slowly around. “I suppose I sort of underestimated Lemuel’s abilities to get things done,” he said ruefully.

Circumscribing the entire warehouse, the whole length of the raised platform was crammed with cages filled with flapping, crying, crawling things. The warehouse was loud with the sounds of displaced air, the sudden shifts and fluttering of beating wings, the spatter of droppings, and loudest of all, the constant screech of captive birds. Pigeons and sparrows and starlings registered their distress with their coos and calls: feeble on their own, but a sharp, grating chorus en masse. Parrots and canaries punctuated the avian wittering with squawked exclamation marks that made Isaac wince. Geese and chickens and ducks added a rustic air to the cacophony. Hard-faced aspises flung themselves through the air the short distance of their cages, their little lizard bodies banging against the chickenwire fronts. They licked their wounds with their tiny lions’ faces and roared like aggressive mice. Huge glass tanks of flies and bees and wasps, mayflies and butterflies and flying beetles sounded a vivid aggressive drone. Bats hung upside down and regarded Isaac with fervent little eyes. Dragonfly-snakes rustled their long elegant wings and hissed loudly.

The floors of the cages had not been cleaned and the acrid smell of birdshit was very strong. Sincerity, Isaac saw, was wobbling up and down the room shaking her striped head. David saw where Isaac was looking.

“Yeah,” he shouted. “See? The stink’s making her miserable.”

“Fellows,” said Isaac, “I appreciate your forbearance, I really do. It’s give and take, isn’t it? Lub, remember when you were doing those experiments in sonar and you had that chap in banging that huge drum for two days?”

“Isaac, it’s already been nearly a week! How long’s it going to be? What’s the schedule? At the very least clean their mess up!”

Isaac looked down at the irate faces below him. They were very pissed off, he realized. He thought quickly for a compromise.

“Fine, look,” he eventually said, “I’ll clean them out tonight-I promise. And I’ll work flat fucking out…I know! I’ll work hard on the loud ones first. I’ll try and get rid of them within…two weeks?” he finished lamely. David and Lublamai expostulated, but he interrupted their jeers and catcalls. “I’ll pay a little extra rent for the next month! How’s that?”

The rude noises died down instantly. The two men stared at him calculatedly. They were scientific comrades, the Brock Marsh bad boys, friends; but their existence was precarious, and there was limited room for sentimentality where money was concerned. Knowing that, Isaac tried to forestall any temptation they might have to seek alternative space. He, after all, couldn’t afford the rent here alone.

“What are we talking?” asked David.

Isaac pondered.

“Two extra guineas?”

David and Lublamai looked at each other. It was generous.

“And,” said Isaac casually, “while we’re on the subject, I’d appreciate a hand. I don’t know how to manage some of these…uh…scientific subjects. Didn’t you do some ornithological theory once, David?”

“No,” said David tartly. “I was an assistant to someone who did. I was bored shitless. And stop being so transparent, ‘Zaac. I’m not going to resent your pestilential pets any less if you involve me in your projects…” He laughed with a trace of genuine humour. “Have you been taking Introductory Empathic Theory, or something?”

But despite his scorn, David was ascending the stairs, with Lublamai behind him.

He paused at the top and took in all the jabbering captives.

“Devil’s Tail, Isaac!” he whispered, grinning. “How much has this lot set you back?”

“Haven’t entirely settled with Lemuel yet,” said Isaac dryly. “But my new boss should see me all right.”

Lublamai had joined David on the top step. He gesticulated at a collection of variegated cages in the far corner of the walkway.