Eric McCormack - Cloud

“SO I WAS ON the road by myself at the crack of dawn this morning,” said Dupont. “I wanted to make sure I was in time for breakfast with you before you left. I have a general staff meeting scheduled right afterwards, too. I hope I can stay awake.

“I got here about half an hour ago and the guard told me they’d found what was left of little Prissy. I’m glad Marsha didn’t come back with me and see that. By the way, she’s sorry she didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to you. She really enjoyed meeting you and hopes we’ll all get together again sometime soon.”

As he told me all this, the sun was shining through the hut window directly on him, giving his face a golden sheen that was rather eerie and unsettling. My bagel had turned into sawdust. Not Marsha? Marsha wasn’t the woman who’d been with me in bed in the pitch darkness? Then who was it?

“Well, I know you need to get on the road,” said Dupont, and we both stood up and shook hands.

“It was great to see you again,” he said. “It’s hard to believe so much time has passed since we met. I always feel I can really talk to you. Next time, we’ll make sure we’re not in such a rush.”

We promised each other we’d keep in touch. He went off to his meeting and I returned to the hut to pack my bag.

MINUTES LATER I was just about ready to go to my car when Dupont, quite out of breath, rushed into the hut.

“I’m glad I caught you,” he said. He was looking at me with great curiosity. “I just found out it was Griffin who killed Prissy. I thought you ought to know that.” Apparently, on his way to his meeting, Griffin’s guard had called him over. He’d just seen bloodstains on the door handle of her room. Dupont went with him and saw the blood for himself.

The guard opened her door for him.

Griffin was sitting quietly on her bed. She wasn’t quite as hard to spot as usual because of the blood smeared all over her dress. She admitted it was the blood of a cat she’d killed.

“It seems,” Dupont told me, “she slipped out last night when the guard left the door ajar to pick up her dinner tray. He didn’t notice she was gone because he’s so used to not noticing her.”

He was watching me now in that inquisitive way, but I tried to look as unperturbed as possible.

“Let’s not beat around the bush,” said Dupont. “She told me she was with you, Harry. And that from the moment she saw you, she felt very attracted to you. When we came back from Waterville she was already in the guest room, waiting for you. She was watching you while you undressed. Of course, you wouldn’t have seen her even when your light was on.”

But I had heard something — that sound I’d taken to be doves’ wings disturbed by Prissy outside the window. It must have been Griffin, watching me, excited at what was about to happen.

“She asked me if you’d be there again tonight,” said Dupont. “She wants you again. You might say you’re her idea of love at first sight.”

My stomach was upset. I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

“Believe me, Harry, I’m telling you the truth,” said Dupont. “It was after leaving you, on her way back to her room, that she killed Prissy. She just picked her up and ripped her to pieces. I asked her why, and she said why not? Of course, when she said that, I knew the procedure must have turned her into a predator as well as a sociopath. Maybe the sliver of her brain we removed had something in it that would have blocked the violent impulse. If so, that’s another valuable finding for us — there may be some way of reversing the problem by more snipping in that area of her brain.”

I was shocked but Dupont was looking at me with admiration, or perhaps envy.

“Well, well, Harry,” he said. “You do realize she might just as easily have killed you, too? She was the most dangerous lover you’ve ever had.”

I didn’t know what to say. I could see he thought I’d been well aware it was Griffin who was in bed with me. I couldn’t protest that I’d actually believed it was his lover, Marsha.

Dupont now tried to coax further information out of me. What kind of sexual activities did Griffin prefer? Was her role in them of the dominant sort? Were there any notably bestial aspects to her methods?

I refused to answer.

“I know it’s embarrassing to be asked about such intimate things,” Dupont said. “But this is just the kind of insight that’s invaluable to our research. In the past, we’ve always had to deal in speculation and not hard facts in these matters.” He then made a quite surprising admission. “That’s why, at one point, I even considered having the procedure done on my own brain. If a trained scientist like me could communicate how the world appears to a pre-human primate, what a contribution to knowledge it would be.” Dupont shook his head. “But what if the surgery destroyed the very part of the brain that values such knowledge? Until we find that out, we can’t risk operating on an expert.”

I was shocked to hear he’d even thought about such a crazy thing.

“You know, Harry, you might be a good candidate, too,” he said. “I mean, especially after your antics with Griffin last night. Like a lot of Canadians, you’re actually a very strange person disguised as someone very ordinary!” His eyes lit up and he laughed. “Don’t look so worried. I’m only kidding.”

With that, we shook hands again and he hurried off to his meeting.

I headed to the parking area, bag in hand. The guard unlocked the gate for me and I went to my car. The parking area was covered in leaves, as if from a big wind during the night. But when I stepped onto those leaves they took flight and I realized they were, in fact, copper-winged butterflies, dozing in the morning sun. A moment later, I turned the key in the ignition and the entire remaining surface of the parking lot seemed to ascend. The mass of butterflies, like a flying carpet, swooped away magically into the air, blocked out the sun for a moment, then disappeared over the treetops to the south.

DURING THE EARLY stages of my long drive back to Camberloo that day, I was tormented by Dupont’s assumption that I was the kind of man who’d knowingly go to bed with someone like Griffin.

Of course I might have told him straight out that I’d thought it was Marsha who was in bed with me. But rather than admit to that conscienceless act against my host and old friend, I’d preferred to let him go on believing that I knew it was Griffin, herself a being without a conscience. Morally speaking, I suppose I got what I deserved.

Suddenly, a foolish thought hit me. I pulled off the road, parked, and adjusted the rear-view mirror so that it focused on my forehead. I examined my brow up to the hairline from every angle, this way and that, probing it gently with my fingertips.

Nothing. No pain, no sign of any post-operative scar. Nor did I feel any different from when I’d arrived at the institute, except for being a little hung over. Of course, Dupont had said not feeling any different was the common reaction to the procedure.

Still, there was no scar.

MY MOMENT OF extreme paranoia over, I started up the car and drove on northwards. But I didn’t begin to feel more completely at ease with myself till several hours later, when I crossed the border into Canada once more.

Several months had passed since my journey to Institute 77. At first, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get out of my mind that midnight visitation to my room of the half-human, Griffin. Everything else — the reunion with Dupont, the revelation of his involvement in a horrific surgical-anthropological experiment, the description by Marsha of the decline of the Uplands — took a distant second place to the memory of what had occurred in the guest room of Dupont’s quarters. At the meeting with the mining consortium the next morning in Camberloo, I was still in a fog. I pretended I’d caught a bit of a cold and allowed Jonson to take the lead role.