Page 47 of This Vicious Hunger
“Tell me,” I say urgently. “Please. I’m so tired of always being one step behind. Let me prove to you that you’ve made the right choice.”
It isn’t what I intended to say, nor is it what I expected when I marched into the lab ready to walk away from it all if Petaccia dared lie to me again. As always, the lure of true knowledge, of being part of the inner circle, turns me into that same child who begged to learn to read, who stole books under the cover of night, who risked her whole life and future for justone more page.
Petaccia shakes her head. The ground rushes beneath me like a river, lightheadedness threatening to engulf me. I lean against the doorframe, breath coming in short bursts. The doctor doesn’t move, only watches me curiously. I pull myself together.
“Tell me,” I spear through gritted teeth, “or I will make sure that everybody knows just how dangerous your little garden experiment really is.”
Do I mean it? I don’t know. In that second, maybe I do. I draw myself up to my full height and give the hardest stare I can muster.
Petaccia smirks. “Thereshe is.” It is almost a croon. “Good girl.” Her smile grows at my confusion, like that of a wolf, slow and sinister as a snarl. She rubs her hands together and then clapsthem. This time I don’t jump. “You’re finally starting to think like an achiever. Devour all the knowledge and fuck the rest. I think… rather than tell you—perhaps it will be better to show you. Come with me.”
“La Vita has always been a hub of cutting-edge research,” Petaccia lectures as she leads me out of the lab. I follow her into the dusty stairwell, grateful for the cool dimness and a chance to slow my racing heart. “My parents met at the university and worked here all their lives. I was practically raised here. Of course, it was very different back then. They had half the funding and twice the inexperienced staff. Work was stolen, names changed on academic papers. It was a mess.”
The doctor turns to smile at me over her shoulder and it’s that same wolfish grin, a flash of stained teeth in her ghostly oval face.She’s mad, I think abruptly.It’s not genius, but lunacy.But it’s a fleeting concern. I’m more focused on making sure I don’t trip. Until I know more, I plan to reserve my judgement.
“Anyway, there’s a lot of their theories at play in my own work. My father, especially, was fascinated by the life-death cycle, in both animals and plants. He became convinced that the end of life was merely another stage, like birth or adolescence. Not just in words but… how do I put this—in essence?”
“My father believed something similar,” I say despite myself. “That’s why he used to say that grieving and care of the body were so important.”
“Ah yes, but you see this is where your father and I always differed. Don’t misunderstand me, he was one of the most respectful undertakers I’ve ever met—and I’ve met a handful over the years.But when I talk about life stages I don’t talk about birth, adolescence, adulthood, death. I talk about birth, life, and afterlife.”
“Of the soul…?” I venture. We’ve reached the middle landing of La Vita, whose locked doors I have tried many a time to no avail. I’ve assumed they were the same as the room on the ground floor, where we unpacked the imported tree, though I’ve never stopped checking, just in case. Petaccia holds out her hand to halt me.
“Not an afterlife of the soul,” she says. “Of the body.”
She pulls a ring of keys from one of the pockets of her top skirts and inserts a tiny brass one into the lock of the door to our right. It swings open to reveal a deceptively large, dim room. There is a single window draped in muslin; a long metal table runs the length of the room, ditched in the middle like the base of a valley, with grates in the floor at several intervals and taps for running water.
On the back wall runs a battery of metal cages, perhaps ten feet tall stretching from floor to ceiling—covered at top and bottom by some kind of spongy material. Some cages are larger than others and many are empty. Those that are not house shredded hay bedding and rats, mice, the odd small bird, and in one even a rabbit.
I glance back at Dr. Petaccia uncertainly. This was not what I expected, though I’m still not sure what that was. The animals are all fairly quiet and unusually subdued; some twitch frantically when we enter and others stare with glassy eyes. My stomach churns at the sight of them all.
It is cool like a natural sepulchre in here, or one of the memorialist churches—or, I suppose, one of the mourning tombs of old. And there is death in the face of every creature in here. It is a far cry from the laboratory above, which is hot and living, green andyellow in every direction; in this room there is only the dull ache of grief.
“What do you need with them all?”It’s inhumane. It’s unforgivable.I can’t say so aloud, but Petaccia’s expression says I don’t need to.
“Come, now. Where’s that spirit I saw only minutes ago? You don’t mean to tell me you’ve lost your nerve already.”
“No, I just… I wasn’t expecting—”
“Science has never been clean, Thora. It has never been won the easy way. As my father always used to say, ‘You’ve got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette.’ Do you think we learned how to survive by accident? We humans have made our fame by stealing and bartering, by carving our knowledge out by the flesh. How do you think we learned to operate to save lives? How do you think doctors and midwives have learned their crafts for centuries?”
“Yes, but you’re abotanist—”
“Thora.” Petaccia turns from the survey of her kingdom, and I’m impressed by the disappointment her frown conveys.
“You haven’t told me what any of it’s for,” I say weakly. “Maybe then I’d understand. What does any of this have to do with the garden or Olea’s plants? All I see is suffering. I would expect this in—in one of the bigger laboratories maybe, anatomical science. These animals… look at them. Doesn’t it look like they wish for death?”
“Ah.” Petaccia guides me farther into the room and closes the door. Instantly I’m more aware of the stillness in here. I can’t hear anything from outside, no noise from scholars in the distant square, no creaks or clanks of pipes. It is the kind of stillness that usually only comes after death, after the mourning and the cradle and the burning; the flutter of my heart might as well be the only living thing in here.
Petaccia says nothing as she watches me. It’s only a few seconds but it feels as though she’s waiting for something, some proof that she can trust me. I try to raise my chin again, to square myself up against the horror.It is science, I think.This laboratory is a frontier of discovery.She must be satisfied, for her next move is across the room; to the left of the cages there are long, thin wooden shelves that look older than anything else in here, each one crammed to the gills with bottles and jars, filled colourful pipettes sitting in saline and cubes of what might be salt or sugar injected with similar colours. There looks to be a certain order, or progression, amongst the vials, but I can’t make any sense of it.
“What are they?” I ask.
“Every single one of these is a failure, or a representation of a near miss, which is essentially the same thing, I suppose.”
I’m tired of waiting for Petaccia to explain herself. I have an inkling, the tiniest blossom of an idea, but the thought horrifies me so much that I push it down.Impossible.
Each of the bottles, jars, and tinctures is a different size and colour. Some are similar but none are the same. Each has been labelled.Antidote #1,Antidote #238,Antidote #654… My blood runs cold with the suspicion that each of these “antidotes” is probably worth at least one animal life.
