The Plague Dogs (5 page)

"I can smell that," said Snitter. "You smell like a dog-blanket left out in the rain. Flatface, listen

—does the tobacco man ever go through that door?"

"Yes, to feed the birds. It's al! birds in there. You can smell them. Besides, I've seen through when he opens it."

"Through and through," said Snitter. "How does he do it?"

"He's usually carrying things, and he pushes it with his shoulder or his foot and then edges through sideways. Let me tell you what happened when I was ill.

First of all the whitecoats—"

Snitter went back to the doors and pressed the wedge of his muzzle gently into the central crack.

The right-hand door, which had the weaker spring, gave slightly, and he slowly pushed through first his jaw and then his whole head, accustoming himself to the sensation of the counter-pressure. As soon as his head was through he turned his body sideways and began to press with the weight of his flank against the flat of the door.

"Follow me right up close, old Rowf. There's a board loose in the fence, do you see? Don't jump at it, just push. Why, what a cloud of flies—no, it's birds—birds!"

He eased his entire body through the door. Rowf followed him, nose to tail, and the swing doors closed behind them, cutting off the familiar smells of dog, straw and meat and exposing them, with all the suddenness of an airliner from the north discharging passengers in the tropics, to the immediate impact of strange light, strange air and strange surroundings.

The place was full of birds. They could smell, all about them, the light, sharp odour of their droppings and hear, too, the sounds, so much quicker and softer than those made by dogs, of their stirrings in the dark. A pigeon nearby preened a wing, uttered a single, sleepy "Roo-too-roo; took!" and was silent. There must be many, many birds. Pausing and listening, both dogs had the impression of a forest in which the leaves were pigeons, spray upon spray, rustling leaves receding into an airy gloom.

Here and there a wiry branch creaked; here and there a fragment from a seed-trough pattered, like a fir-cone or a beech-nut, to the floor.

They had entered the pigeon aviary, reservoir of one of the more eagerly watched, important and ambitious projects in which Animal Research was engaged. The object was nothing less than to discover how and by what means pigeons exercise their homing instinct—a Promethean undertaking indeed, since the birds themselves have always been content with ignorance in the matter. The thoroughness of the experiments, devised and conducted by Mr. Lubbock, a colleague and friend of Dr.

Boycott, was impressive. Here, systematically divided into groups and caged in different compartments, lived hundreds of birds, each a grain of coral in that great reef of conscious knowledge to be built by Mr. Lubbock for the good, or the advancement, or the edification—or something or other, anyway—of the human race. Of those birds which had already been released to flight at greater or lesser distances from the station, some had had one eye or both eyes occluded by special appliances; some had been fitted with minute contact lenses, to distort their vision; others had had the sensitivity of feathers, feet, nostrils, beaks, mouths or lungs impaired or destroyed before setting out; others again had undergone carefully planned conditioning designed to confuse them when exposed to normal weather conditions. In Cage 19 it rained a continuous light drizzle twenty-four hours a day. In Cage 3, which was blacked out from the rest of the aviary, there was perpetual sunshine; in Cage 11, perpetual darkness. In Cage 8 the source of light (a simulated sun) moved anti-clockwise. Cage 21 was unusually hot, Cage 16A (so termed to differentiate it, for the avoidance of possible confusion, from Cage 16, in which all the inmates had died of cold one night, necessitating total replacement) unusually cold. In Cage 32 a light wind blew from one direction night and day. Birds born in these cages had never known any other weather conditions until their time came to be released to a homing flight. Cage 9 contained a special ceiling which reproduced the night sky, but with the various constellations disordered. At the far end of the aviary was a row of individual cages, containing birds into whose heads (45) had been grafted magnetic particles, some attractive, others repellent. Finally, there were those pigeons who had been deafened, but left with other faculties intact.

The results of all the experiments so far had been most informative, yielding the basic information that while some of the birds succeeded in returning home, others did not. Many, in fact, in obedience to their defective stimuli, had flown straight out to sea until they perished; which was most interesting. One could draw the firm and valuable conclusions: first, that birds whose faculties had been impaired were less swift and competent in getting home than birds whose faculties had not; and secondly, that in any given group, some succeeded in returning while others, who did not, presumably died. Six months ago Mr. Lubbock had taken part in a television programme on the project, when he had explained the pattern of the experiments and the system by which various possibilities were being eliminated. Since then, important evidence had been obtained in support of the theory that the birds possessed an instinct not really explicable in scientific terms. This was humorously known at Lawson Park as the "R. N. K." theory, from a remark once made by Tyson to Mr. Lubbock—Reckon nobody knaws."

Snitter and Rowf made their way cautiously forward between the cages, half-expecting to meet some kind of enemy in this strange place. Or perhaps one of the white-coats, with brisk walk and purposeful tapping of heels, might suddenly open a door and, pausing just inside in the way they did, raise his soap-smelling hand to the wall in the gesture that created light. All remained quiet, however, and they pattered on, side by side, to the further end of the aviary. Here they were once more met by double doors leading into the next block. Snitter eased his way through and Rowf followed as before.

At once, though in a place similar in form to the last and constructed of the same materials, they encountered another change, arresting as that, to humans, of red limelight to green. All was the same, all was utterly different. An intense, slavering excitement shot through them. They stiffened, sniffed the air, whined, scratched and trembled.

Rowf leapt forward with two quick barks. The place was crowded with rats, rats scuttling and crouching in innumerable cages. There were dead rats, too—that was plain to be smelt; and some strange kind of rat, the smell of which seemed to come from one quarter in particular—a gritty, black fine]]. Filtering through all, posseting and curding the thin and wholesome odour of rats, was a vile and loathsome redolence, as of pestilence or death, so that Rowf, even as he barked about, was struck by an instant tetter of horror, and slunk back silently to where Snitter, with head uplifted and ears cocked, was standing on the shadowy floor beneath a steel table.

They were in the cancer research block, where rats, after being infected with cancer, were treated with various palliative drugs and preparations, being dissected after death so that the results of treatment could be observed and noted. There were in actual fact sixty-two separate cages, not counting the single large cage containing the control pool or reserve, from which healthy rats were taken as required for one experiment or another. Here were cancers of the ear, nose, throat, belly and bowels; malignant and less malignant cancers, sarcomata of many kinds, all living and growing, like submarine anemones, in pharyngeal, uterine or abdominal worlds of silence needing neither sun nor rain. Secret was the garden, set in the pathless awe now confronting the two bewildered dogs. The rats ran in, the rats ran out and never a rat to be seen, save for those stiff bodies lying on the glass table, the crop of Ac previous day's work, neatly split across from end to end to disclose, like walnuts, the white, ridged and crinkled, kernel-like growths within.

In one corner of the block, like a private ward in a hospital, stood a separate compartment with a locked door bearing the notice,
Dr. GOODNER. KEEP OUT. AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.

This, too, contained rats—black rats of Norway—despite the fact that they were not personnel, this term being generally understood at Lawson Park (and indeed elsewhere) to connote only men and women (as in the Rights of Personnel, or the Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions of Personnel, or even All Personnel That on earth do dwell Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice).

The exact nature of the project being pursued in this locked compartment was secret. Dr.

Goodner never discussed it with anyone but the Director; others at the station, however (including Mr.

Powell), had hazarded the surmise that it had probably, like most such work, been commissioned by the Ministry of Defence.

Rowf paused at the locked door, sniffing at the crack beneath and listening. "What's the matter with this place? What is that smell?"

"The leaves are rotten," whispered Snitter. For some reason the smell made him afraid. "They fall in autumn, you know—fill the gutters. Maggots and flies, maggots and flies. Are you hungry?"

"Not yet."

"Then come on. We're trying to get out, Rowf. Even if we were to get in there and eat that smell, we'd be all whistle-belly-vengeance by sunrise, and the tobacco man would find us lying here sick, or worse. There's some terrible sort of disease in there—that's what that smell's about. Come on, quick, before there's time to change your nose."

With this Snitter turned, led the way down to the further end of the block and once more pushed through the doors.

Later, the wanderings of that night merged, for both of them, into a half-remembered confusion of formaldehyde and surgical spirit, fur, feather and hair; of paint, glass and disinfectant, hay, straw and cotton-wool; of all manner of excreta and glandular secretions; carbolic and rust, dried blood and wet mucus, dust, drains and sweat; quick, low alarm calls of beasts unknown and windy sus-piration of forced breath in darkness. They came to the next block, the sparrow and finch aviary, where diseases of cage-birds were investigated, together with the effect of various preparations used for dressing seed-corn before sowing. These particular sparrows had cost rather more (4S) than two farthings for five, certainly in overheads if not in purchasing price. There was a special providence in their fall; but whether they fell to the ground with or without your heavenly Father, or mine, or Dr. Boycott's (for he had, albeit unacknowledged, the same One as you and I), there is no telling.

They ran swiftly through the small coati and mongoose block, with its rank, tropical smell of procyonidae and viverridae (Mr. Powell had been set to investigate the relatively mild effect upon these creatures of snake venom, and several were injected daily with doses of varying quantity and concentration), and so came to the pregnancy testing unit, where the urine of young women was injected into mice, so that they (the young women, not the mice) might learn (by the reactions of the mice), a little earlier than they would otherwise have learned, whether they had been impregnated as well as imprudent, and incautious as well as incontinent. The operation of a normal pregnancy-testing centre was not, of course, within the true ambit of Lawson Park, but the Director, who was a doctor of medicine and retained a certain interest in gynaecology, had recently accepted a remit for the examination of new and swifter methods of pregnancy-testing without animals—for which purpose a control group of animals was, of course, necessary, in order that the efficiency of new methods might be checked against that of the old. Here Rowf, clumsy with uneasiness and impatience, knocked over a small table and with it a box of mice, each confined in a separate, glass-fronted compartment. The glass shattered and those of the mice who were not already dead or close to death escaped, several finding their way out of the building by way of the drains. Rowf was still sniffing about the glassy floor when Snitter once more interrupted him.

"Leave it spilt, old Rowf! Let it trickle away! It's made the floor sharp and the blood will run out of your nose. Come and push at the next door. It's too much for me."

They thrust their way hesitantly into the air-freight testing centre, where various methods were being examined of packing and transporting live animals by air. This work had been commissioned jointly by several airline companies, largely in order that they could reply that they had done so when faced with criticism of the deaths of various animals (such as small monkeys, lorises and aye-ayes, captured and bound not for the Carolina plantations but for zoos) which, having begun by being created, had ended by being crated, and succumbing to over-crowding, fear, thirst, neglect or to all four of these together. It was not, of. course, difficult to design humane and efficient travelling crates for animals provided that cost was no object and that one could count upon a reasonable measure of responsible human care during the journey. To do the thing cheaply, however, and counting upon the prevalence of ignorance, indifference and neglect, called not only for ingenuity but also for expert knowledge of what various animals could be relied upon to endure. A principal factor was the fear and strain brought about by engine noise, sudden dropping or striking of crates, proximity of humans and alarming smells such as combustion engine exhaust, tobacco smoke and human sweat; and to these, accordingly, the control groups of animals were regularly exposed for longer or shorter periods, the results being carefully noted by Dr. Boycott, who had, in as short a time as three months, made the remarkable discovery that overcrowding, rough handling and prolonged thirst were beyond doubt the major contributors to higher-than-average death rates occurring among small mammals transported by air.

They wandered up and down the lines of hutches in the rabbitry, where experiments were being conducted to try to develop a food, similar to rat poison, which rabbits immune to myxomatosis would be eager to eat, with fatal results. Again, cost had proved a difficulty. A palatable and caustic poison, which burned through the intestines in twenty-four hours, had been tested successfully, but unfortunately its mass-production was not practicable at anything like an economic figure. A second poison, harmless to humans and cheap enough to produce, had been demonstrated by Dr. Boycott on television. On that occasion he had injected first a colleague and then a rabbit, the latter successfully dying in convulsions in less than two minutes under the cameras and the interested eyes of (SO) thousands of viewers. This poison, however, Dr. Boycott had so far not succeeded in making reasonably palatable, so that to date, injection remained the only means of administration. Of the possibilities of a certain sterility drug, however, he was more hopeful, and this was now being administered, in various forms and strengths, to both bucks and does. Rowf, having made several attempts to break into one of the hutches by leaping at the wire, and been requested by the rabbit inside to be so good as to let him die in peace, rejoined Snitter in his search for some way out other than the swing doors. They found none, and down to the next circle they went.