She left it open, however, the lid gaping. When she brought him to this place, there might be very little time. With a last glance at the other boxes, pausing in the room’s rustling silence, she whispered goodbye.

The door hissed shut on her tragedy. She secured the locks, which were there for two reasons: to keep danger out, and to keep it in. She went back downstairs, assured that she was well prepared for the worst, uneasy at leaving Alice unprotected any longer than necessary.

2

2

THE HOLLOW SHRIEKS of a terrified rhesus brought Sarah Roberts to her feet. She ran down the hall to the cage room, her shoes clattering on the linoleum.

What she saw when she peered into the cage of their most important animals made her feel cold. Methuselah was brachiating madly through the cage screaming as only a rhesus can scream. On the floor lay Betty’s head, its monkey face frozen in last agony. As he shot around the cage Methuselah brandished Betty’s arm, the little hand open as if waving goodbye. The rest of Betty lay scattered across the cage. As she rushed from the room to get help Sarah almost slipped in the blood that had run down to the floor.

Before she reached the door, it swung open. Methuselah’s shrieks had brought the whole Gerontology group.

“What the hell did you do, Methuselah!” Phyllis Rockler shouted. She was the lab’s animal keeper.

The monkey’s face was as crazy as any Sarah had ever seen, and a psychiatric internship at Bellevue had given her a look at a good number of crazy faces.

Charlie Humphries, their resident blood expert, pressed his face to the cage. “God, how ugly!” He stepped back, his sneakers squishing. “Monkeys are bastards.”

“Get Tom down here,” Sarah said. She needed him for her own sanity, forget the ape. Moments later he came rushing in, his face gray. “Nobody’s hurt,” she said, seeing the fear in his eyes. “No human body, that is.”

“Is that Betty?”

“Methuselah tore her apart. He stopped sleeping two days ago and he’s been getting increasingly irritable. But we had no reason to expect this.” There was a flurry of activity behind them as Phyllis set up the videotape equipment. She would record Methuselah’s further behavior for later analysis.

Sarah watched Tom react to the catastrophe. She could practically see him calculating how this affected his own career track. Number One was never far from mind with Tom Haver. Then he turned his eyes on her, full of wonderful, totally genuine concern. “Is this going to hurt you? What’s the latest on the blood runs?”

“Still indexing to the same curve as before. No change.”

“So there’s no resolution. And Betty’s dead. Oh, Christ, you’re in trouble.”