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Show 10 "I'm not a coward," she says slowly, deliberately. "Good," says Boaz, his mouth achieving a smile. She smiles easily back. It is possible that sometime after the experiments were terminated and the dogs were dead Maia came back to the lab, perhaps still employed, to help Boaz write up the results of the experiments, or just to retrieve the little china pot she had used to brew coffee. Perhaps she came for no reason at all, just wandering in, opening the door by chance, to see the small square room again. Her eyes must have travelled over the walls, over the neat graphs Boaz had drawn of the dogs' performance in the box, graphs he had tacked to the walls, graphs with the dogs' names, Mustard, Monroe, Eggyolk, Theresa, graphs with the dogs' names, Mustard, Faulkner, Yoghurt, Pablo, Theresa, twenty-three dogs, twenty-three names, Mustard, Pablo, Theresa; her eyes must have wandered over the untidy bookcase, the flimsy file cabinet holding old research proposals and reprints of other studies on dogs, other neuropsychological studies on dogs, mostly brown mongrel dogs, dogs with names, for it is customary in the biological sciences to name laboratory dogs, though cats and rats and mice are given only numbers; over the cabinet full of electronic scraps, bits of electrode wire and odd-numbered dials and snipped lengths of exposed film, over the old brown desks where she and Boaz had sat, talking or not talking while the dogs ran their trials in the experimental box. And when she came back Maia may have stepped across the stained floor to the sound-proof box, put a thin hand out to touch the metal sides of the huge box; she must have opened first the outer door, pressed the heavy |
