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Show 25 whimper and they thrash their tails and roll their heads, and in the end they too go down, down in motionless forms, their eyes glazed, their tongues hanging thick and still, their respiration so slow and even that it can barely be detected. "Let's go," says Boaz finally, and Maia says nothing. She moves mechanically to open the door of the lab, and Boaz carries first Theresa, then Pablo and Mustard, past the open doors of the office workers, outside to his car. Pass 5 Back, go back one last time: we approach the center. We have found the remote past unclear and the distant future uncertain, but the more closely we approach the center, the more distinct the fact becomes. We saw, fairly clearly, what happened just beforehand: how Boaz misplaced the syringe and Maia fed her sandwich to the dogs, and we observed them together afterwards, sitting silent in the lab, watching the dogs struggle down. But we have not yet seen it all; we must have flinched, blinked in the face of the unkind sun; our eyes must have turned away, seeking reasons, extenuations, justifications. Reasons? Justifications? Look again, look now directly into the center: there is no ambiguity, no fiction here, no chain of possible causes or domain of plausible explanations. Here there is only the fact, actual fact, and all is clear and lucid. We have seen them moving toward the center, Boaz and the girl, Maia. They have glanced at the clock, though they have not read it; it is early afternoon now, and on the other side of the campus people |