“But they continue to sell it as a health hazard, which means people continue to believe that cremains are somehow capable of passing along the Kellis-Amberlee virus,” said Rey, with the air of an argument that had been going on since long before I arrived on the scene and would be continuing long after I was gone.
“Can you learn anything from the stored remains?” I asked, before the discussion could go any further. It was an interesting local news angle, but “Australian scientists argue for dispersing powdered kangaroo into the atmosphere” would just start a public panic, no matter how hard I worked to add context.
“Most of what we learn comes from the biological samples we take before we burn things, since cremains are essentially biologically inert,” said Rey, with a faintly aggravated air that didn’t seem to be aimed at me, precisely, so much as aimed at his ongoing argument with Olivia. “Look.” He pointed to the glass. “Susan’s taking brain tissue samples from both of the specimens. She’s already done that twice by this stage in the examination, but since the Kellis-Amberlee virus continues to work after death, sometimes for days, we need to see the tissue at different stages of reanimation in order to properly assess the effect of the virus on the body.”
“How do you store your samples?”
“Some are flash frozen, others are preserved the old-fashioned way, in formaldehyde. They don’t pose an immediate danger, if that’s what you’re asking; there’s never been an outbreak traced back to the specimens we collect in these research stations.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said.
Rey nodded. “I tend to think so as well, since I live here. Come on. There’s something else I want you to see.” He turned, walking to a door at the far end of the narrow room. He unlocked it with a swipe of his key card and stepped through, holding it open for us to follow.
The next room was as narrow and confined as the first, with one unpleasant difference: There were no lights, and when Olivia stepped in after me and closed the door, it became completely dark.
“Everyone in?” asked Rey. “Good.”
He must have done something—flipped a switch or pressed a button—but of course, I couldn’t see whatever it was he did. All I saw was a window slowly opening, filling the same amount of space as the previous room’s glass wall, but showing an entirely different scene. This window looked out, not on a lab full of working scientists, but on a tangled forest enclosure that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a zoo. It was dark inside, with infrared lights providing sufficient illumination for our weak human eyes to see what was in front of us. Something moved in the brush. I managed, somehow, not to jump. It still felt as if my skin separated an inch or so from my body before settling back down into its normal configuration.
“This is where we keep the swamp wallabies that we’ve recovered from the fence line,” said Rey. “They get stepped on by the larger kangaroos, but the injuries are very rarely fatal, so we’re able to bring them inside for observation.”
“Are they infected?” I asked.
“They’re too small to amplify, but they can be carriers; since they’ve been inside the fence, they can’t be released outside of it, for fear that they’ll somehow carry the infection to an unprepared population.” Rey snorted. “As if there were any unprepared populations left on this continent. Regardless, we can learn a lot about the ecology inside the fence by observing them while they recover, and once they’re healthy enough that they can evade the bigger fellows, we put them back where we found them. Usually a few miles in, that is—we don’t want to drop them right on the fence line. That would just be cruel of us.”
I peered into the darkened enclosure, studying the flickers of motion until they resolved themselves into gray-furred, kangaroo-shaped creatures like the one we’d seen on the road during our drive in. Some of them looked toward the glass; others ignored us completely, choosing to focus their attention on chewing bits of greenery or grooming one another. “Can they see us?”
“Some of them can, yes,” said Rey. “That’s the other thing that keeps us from releasing them outside the fence line. They’re too small to amplify, but anything mammalian has the Kellis-Amberlee virus. It’s why no one has to get chemotherapy for their cats anymore.”
“Did people really do that?” I asked distractedly, watching as one of the larger swamp wallabies bounded across the floor of the enclosure.
“Oh, yeah. It was a big market, cancer treatments for pets. Anyway, everything mammalian is infected now, which sort of stopped that. And about half the wallabies we’re retrieving from inside the fence have reservoir conditions. Mostly retinal, probably because that gives them a survival edge, so the ones who go retinal live longer.”
I turned to stare at him. The darkness obscured most of his face, but I got the distinct impression from his tone that he was enjoying this.
The impression only strengthened when he said, “Come on, then. Next up’s the nursery, and that’s always a hit with the tourists.”
“You mean it makes them wet themselves in terror,” chided Olivia.
“Same difference,” said Rey. “Follow me.”
6.
The nursery reminded me uncomfortably of a pre-Rising thriller that Maggie had forced me to watch while we were staying at the Agora in Seattle: a dinosaur adventure called Jurassic Park, in which scientists with more brains than sense cloned enormous prehistoric predators just because they could. Maybe that’s an oversimplification of the movie’s premise, but really, who looks at a three-ton thunder lizard and thinks, “I should get one of those for the back garden”?
Rey had led us through another unmarked door, this time into a hallway that managed to be substantially wider than either of the rooms that came before it, and then down the hall to a door labeled QUIET PLEASE! BABIES COULD BE SLEEPING! He’d pressed a button, and a few moments later, a cheerful-looking woman with improbably red hair had opened the door.
“Just in time,” she’d said. “I’ve put out their lunch.” Then she’d stepped to the side and ushered us into hell.
The nursery was a large, open room, with no sharp edges anywhere in sight. The furniture was all padded in a way I recognized from Nandini’s attempts to baby-proof our flat after Sanjukta was born. Some of the corner guards looked suspiciously identical to the ones we had at home. Large, colorful blocks and foam structures were scattered everywhere, and the floor was covered in a spongy mat that sank down beneath our feet, yielding easily. It would take effort to hurt yourself in this room.
Perhaps none of that seems overly nightmarish, but nightmares take many forms, and the redheaded woman had, after all, just put down lunch for the “babies.” Easily a dozen small kangaroos were clustered around bowls on the floor, heads down as they focused on the important business of eating. Several half-sized koalas were hanging nearby in an artificial tree, watching us as they systematically shoved clumps of eucalyptus into their mouths. Something spiny that looked like a horribly mutated hedgehog was bumbling around the edges of the room, looking for whatever it is that mutant hedgehogs are interested in. I had never been near this many unconfined animals in my life, and the urge to turn and run was virtually overwhelming.
“We have seventeen joeys here, from three different types of kangaroo,” said the redheaded woman, with all indications of pride. “All were retrieved from mothers who died at the fence line.”
“So…these are the babies of infected mothers?” I couldn’t keep the horror from my voice, much as I tried.
“Many female kangaroos are infected during mating season,” said the woman. “They still gestate and give birth, in part because marsupial reproduction is a faster process. They seem strangely disinclined to eat their own infants while they remain in the pouch—we’re doing several research studies into exactly what causes that aversion. It isn’t shared by nonmarsupial mammals, but if we could somehow reproduce it—”
“What she’s trying to say is that these joeys aren’t any more infected than you or I, and you shouldn’t be unfairly prejudiced against them,” said Olivia. With no more warning than that, she scooped a passing joey off the floor and dropped it into my hands. I instinctively pulled it closer to my body, holding it the way I would have held Sanjukta. The tiny kangaroo responded by beginning to investigate my shirtfront with its clever paws, apparently checking me for treats.
“I am not comfortable with this,” I announced.
“But look at that,” said Olivia. “He likes you.”
“We don’t need to worry about them losing their fear of humans,” said Rey. “If they reach adulthood, they’ll learn to be afraid of everything, and if they become infected, they’ll lose their fear of humans regardless of their early experiences. So we keep them comfortable, and we work to remind ourselves that these creatures aren’t just terrifying monsters on the other side of a chain-link wall.”
The joey was now tugging on the front of my shirt in a way that was either adorable or terrifying, depending on how I allowed myself to think about it. “That’s an admirable goal,” I said.
Olivia leaned forward and took the joey away from me. I breathed what I hoped would be a largely unnoticed sigh of relief. “No point in making you wet yourself,” she said. “You’re still my boss, and I’m sure that would show up poorly on my performance review.”
“Yes, it would,” I said. I pointed to the bumbling spiny thing. “What is that?”
“That’s an echidna,” said Rey.
“Ah,” I said. “I see why you thought the hedgehog was one of those.”
Olivia laughed.
“Come on,” said Rey. “This is a nice place to spend a little time, but there’s more to see.”
“Isn’t there always?” I asked rhetorically, and moved to follow him.