components. Letting Javed in on the secret of its existence was the other. Both those things were to be vital keys to everything that happened on that winter day, when Javed and Alex and I finally realized what it was all about, and took Dad’s fate into our own hands. Not that Javed broke his promise. He swore he would never tell anyone about Dad’s work and he didn’t. But if it hadn’t been for him, things would have turned out very differently.
4
F OR A WEEK OR two at the end of June, Dad was at a bit of a loose end. He had done as much work as he could on researching the genome information. What he needed now was a virus that he could start investigating. He had taken samples of blood from all the squirrels and he found some antibodies, which he kept for future reference, but he hadn’t found a single live virus. The babies were all bursting with health.
Mr Davenport had assured him he would find one. The only question was when. While he waited, Dad surfed the Internet and read through all the journals he got on subscription, keeping abreast of the latest developments in the field. When he was burned out with that he came and helped me with the squirrels. ‘Civilizing’ them, he called it. They needed to get used to his smell and his way of touching them, so the time wasn’t wasted. He was as cool and distant as he could be when we were working together, but I could tell that the little ones were getting under his skin. I caught him smiling sometimes as they scurried up his arm, and laughing when they tried to burrow down between his fingers with their tiny paws.
‘Maybe we should start a squirrel farm instead,’ I said to him once. ‘Or a little zoo, or one of those farms where town children go to get bitten by donkeys.’
He laughed, but nothing would make him change direction now. He said I shouldn’t give the squirrels names because it would make me too attached to them. They were experimental subjects, he said, not pets, and the only identification we needed was written on their little yellow ear tags. But I gave them all names anyway, partly because it was something to do with my mind while I was sitting there with my hand in the cage. All the red squirrels had names beginning with R and all the grey ones had names beginning with G. There were twenty-four greys and twelve reds, equal numbers of males and females, and I had fun thinking up the names. Some of the babies were quite distinctive, like Rosie, who had a golden streak along her back, and Greg, who had a bit of a squint. But most of them were pretty much impossible to tell apart, so the names, initially, were pretty meaningless really. But I did begin to think of them as pets. It was impossible not to.
They were so, so cute and beautiful and funny. Every last one of them had a different character, and that was why, as time went by, more of the names began to stick.
Each of the small cages had quick learners and slow learners. Smart squirrels and thick squirrels, I called them, though looking back on it I’m not at all sure I hadn’t got that inside out. As each one got well and truly domesticated they got rewarded by being moved out of the little transport cages and into the huge, walk-in cages that lined one long wall of the room. Whatever I might have felt about Mr Davenport’s project I couldn’t fault the preparations he had made for the animals. They had to be healthy or the experiment wouldn’t work, so their accommodation was the best that could be built. The room was ventilated by narrow grilles high up on the walls beneath the ceiling so the air was constantly fresh. The big cages allowed the squirrels as much exercise as they liked, and each had a choice of warm nest boxes at different levels. Once they moved into those bigger spaces there was a high probability that they would become wilder again, or ‘uncivilized’, so I made myself indispensable at the lab by coming in regularly to make sure I could still catch them
4
F OR A WEEK OR two at the end of June, Dad was at a bit of a loose end. He had done as much work as he could on researching the genome information. What he needed now was a virus that he could start investigating. He had taken samples of blood from all the squirrels and he found some antibodies, which he kept for future reference, but he hadn’t found a single live virus. The babies were all bursting with health.
Mr Davenport had assured him he would find one. The only question was when. While he waited, Dad surfed the Internet and read through all the journals he got on subscription, keeping abreast of the latest developments in the field. When he was burned out with that he came and helped me with the squirrels. ‘Civilizing’ them, he called it. They needed to get used to his smell and his way of touching them, so the time wasn’t wasted. He was as cool and distant as he could be when we were working together, but I could tell that the little ones were getting under his skin. I caught him smiling sometimes as they scurried up his arm, and laughing when they tried to burrow down between his fingers with their tiny paws.
‘Maybe we should start a squirrel farm instead,’ I said to him once. ‘Or a little zoo, or one of those farms where town children go to get bitten by donkeys.’
He laughed, but nothing would make him change direction now. He said I shouldn’t give the squirrels names because it would make me too attached to them. They were experimental subjects, he said, not pets, and the only identification we needed was written on their little yellow ear tags. But I gave them all names anyway, partly because it was something to do with my mind while I was sitting there with my hand in the cage. All the red squirrels had names beginning with R and all the grey ones had names beginning with G. There were twenty-four greys and twelve reds, equal numbers of males and females, and I had fun thinking up the names. Some of the babies were quite distinctive, like Rosie, who had a golden streak along her back, and Greg, who had a bit of a squint. But most of them were pretty much impossible to tell apart, so the names, initially, were pretty meaningless really. But I did begin to think of them as pets. It was impossible not to.
They were so, so cute and beautiful and funny. Every last one of them had a different character, and that was why, as time went by, more of the names began to stick.
Each of the small cages had quick learners and slow learners. Smart squirrels and thick squirrels, I called them, though looking back on it I’m not at all sure I hadn’t got that inside out. As each one got well and truly domesticated they got rewarded by being moved out of the little transport cages and into the huge, walk-in cages that lined one long wall of the room. Whatever I might have felt about Mr Davenport’s project I couldn’t fault the preparations he had made for the animals. They had to be healthy or the experiment wouldn’t work, so their accommodation was the best that could be built. The room was ventilated by narrow grilles high up on the walls beneath the ceiling so the air was constantly fresh. The big cages allowed the squirrels as much exercise as they liked, and each had a choice of warm nest boxes at different levels. Once they moved into those bigger spaces there was a high probability that they would become wilder again, or ‘uncivilized’, so I made myself indispensable at the lab by coming in regularly to make sure I could still catch them
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