Dr. Franklin's Island by Ann Halam

think so, Miranda. I think he used to have a conscience, but he strangled it.”
    “He cares about the animals,” said Miranda. “I know he hates us, because we make him feel so guilty. But I was watching his face when we were walking around the zoo. He’s sorry for them. And he’s
afraid
.”
    “Yes, I noticed that. Well, of course he’s afraid! His boss is going to . . . going to make him murder two teenagers, basically.” I swallowed hard. I still couldn’t possibly believe those two teenagers were us.
    “Mm. I wonder what Dr. Franklin has got on him, to keep him here. Maybe he’s been in trouble with the law, maybe he’s been thrown out of respectable science too, and this is the only job he could get. But he must be lonely. He must be starved for friendship. We’ll have to try and get him to talk, make personal contact.”
    It’s what you’re supposed to do if you get kidnapped, or if you get trapped by an evil psychopath. You’re supposed to talk to the attacker, humor him, befriend him, make him realize that you’re human so that he can’t do what he planned. That’s the kind of strange thing, like how to be a castaway, that you learn from films, from newspapers, documentaries, from the TV news. . . . But never in a million years do you think it will happen to you. A faint hope rose in me. Maybe, maybe it could be done. Miranda had saved me so often. Maybe she could even save us now. . . .
    I thought about those animals. The capybara with the human lips, the parrots plucking at the growths on their breasts, the bats with tiny, dangling human legs. Suddenly I remembered something.
    “
Miranda,
I saw one! I saw one of those piglets with hands!”
    “What do you mean? We both saw them—”
    “No! Ages ago, before Arnie disappeared. That day we went foraging . . .”
    I told her what I’d seen in the northern woods, by the pool in that dark clearing.
    “Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
    “Because I thought I was seeing things. And then Arnie . . .” My eyes filled with tears. Miranda was being tough and calm as ever, but I was losing my grip. “The truth is I didn’t want you to know,” I wailed. “I didn’t want you to know I was having hallucinations. I was always the weak link, wasn’t I? You and Arnie, you were both okay. He was big and strong, and you . . . you can do anything. But I was useless, I knew I was. Remember the snake in the shelter? I nearly got you killed that time. . . .”
    I was breaking down, beginning to sob. I couldn’t help myself.
    “Oh, come on. The snake probably wasn’t even poisonous. I’m stupid about snakes, that’s all.” She slipped her arm through the bars, took my hand and squeezed it. “You were not useless! Who invented the shadow clock?”
    “I didn’t think of that myself. I remembered it out of a book.”
    “You remembered lots of brilliant things. What about the ant-proof food storage?”
    “The ants got into it.”
    “Yeah, but only at the very end. And you invented the firebox.”
    “I didn’t. I just thought of making one. You made it. If I’d told you about that piglet, we’d have known something weird was going on. We’d have had warning.”
    Miranda shook her head. “Nah. I’d never have believed you. How could anyone believe something like that? What could we have done, anyway? We were trapped. They’d have come to fetch us in the end, if we hadn’t found the passage.”
    Silence fell. It seemed as if we’d run out of things to say.
    “Hey,” said Miranda at last. “If your piglet escaped, maybe we can escape too—”
    “We’ll have to hurry,” I said. “We’re going to be operated on in the morning.”
    The room had grown dim. Outside, the brilliant sunlight was fading into the swift tropical dusk. Soon it would be night. I wished I knew if it was Day Forty or Day Forty-one. This seemed to matter a lot. If this was my last day on earth, I would have liked to be able to think I’d still been free when it