bench,” he said. “That ought to make some of these stiffs sit up!”
Joan said she was seriously thinking of starting an eating-house specialising in rabbit pie, if Bill could keep up the supply of dead rabbits. He replied that he’d already buried enough to feed an army.
Their conversation was generally pitched in this bantering key, save when they really got down to technicalities. But when they had gone, Bill would sit and brood, thinking constantly of Joan. And he could concentrate on nothing else for the rest of that day.
Finally, more or less by accident, he found the press-button which awoke life in the rabbits. He was experimenting with a blood solution he had prepared, thinking that it might remain more constant than the natural rabbit’s blood, which became thin and useless too quickly. He had constructed a little pump to force the natural blood from a rabbit’s veins and fill them instead with his artificial solution. The pump had not been going for more than a few seconds before the rabbit stirred weakly and opened its eyes. It twitched its nose, and lay quite still for a moment, save for one foot which continued to quiver. Then suddenly it roused up and made a prodigious bound from the bench. The thin rubber tubes which tethered it by the neck parted in midair, and it fell awkwardly with a heavy thump on the floor. The blood continued to run from one of the broken tubes, but the pump which forced it out was the rabbit’s own heart—beating at last. The animal seemed to have used all its energy in that one powerful jump, and lay still on the floor and quietly expired.
Bill stood regarding it, his fingers still on the wheel of the pump. Then, when he realised what it meant, he recaptured some of his old exuberance, and danced around the laboratory carrying a carboy of acid as though it were a Grecian urn.
Further experiments convinced him that he had set foot within the portals of Nature’s most carefully guarded citadel. Admittedly he could not himself create anything original or unique in Life. But he could create a living image of any living creature under the sun.
A hot summer afternoon, a cool green lawn shaded by elms and on it two white-clad figures, Joan and Will, putting through their miniature nine-hole course. A bright-striped awning by the hedge, and below it, two comfortable canvas chairs and a little Moorish table with soft drinks. An ivy-covered wall of an old red-brick mansion showing between the trees. The indefinable smell of new-cut grass in the air. The gentle but triumphant laughter of Joan as Will foozled his shot. That was the atmosphere Bill entered at the end of his duty tramp along the lane from the laboratory-it was his first outdoor excursion for weeks-and he could not help comparing it with the sort of world he had been living in: the benches and bottles and sinks, the eye-tiring field of the microscope, the sheets of calculations under the glare of electric light in the dark hours of the night, the smell of blood and chemicals and rabbits.
And he realised completely that science wasn’t the greatest thing in life. Personal happiness was. That was the goal of all men, whatever way they strove to reach it. Joan caught sight of him standing on the edge of the lawn, and came hurrying across to greet him.
“Where have you been all this time?” she asked. “We’ve been dying to hear how you’ve been getting on.”
“I’ve done it,” said Bill.
“Done it? Have you really?” Her voice mounted excitedly almost to a squeak. She grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him across to Will. ”He’s done it!” she announced, and stood between them, watching both their faces eagerly. Will took the news with his usual calmness, and smilingly gripped Bill’s hand.
“Congratulations, old lad,” he said. “Come and have a drink and tell us all about it.”
They squatted, on the grass and helped themselves from the table. Will could see that Bill had been overworking himself badly. His face was drawn and tired, his eyelids red, and he was in the grip of a nervous tension which for the time held him dumb and uncertain of himself.
Joan noticed this, too, and checked the questions she was going to bombard upon him. Instead, she quietly withdrew to the house to prepare a pot of the China tea which she knew always soothed Bill’s migraine. When she had gone, Bill, with an effort, shook some of the stupor from him, and looked across at Will. His gaze dropped, and he began to pluck idly at the grass.
“Will,” he began, presently, “I—” He cleared his throat nervously, and started again in a none too steady voice. “Listen, Will, I have something a bit difficult to say, and I’m not so good at expressing myself. In the first place, I have always been crazily in love with Joan.”
Will sat, and looked at him curiously. But he let Bill go on.
“I never said anything because—well, because I was afraid I wouldn’t make a success of marriage. Too unstable to settle down quietly with a decent girl like Joan. But I found I couldn’t go on without her, and was going to propose —when you beat me to it. I’ve felt pretty miserable since, though this work has taken something of the edge off.”
Will regarded the other’s pale face—and wondered.
“This work held out a real hope to me. And now I’ve accomplished the major part of it. I can make a living copy of any living thing. Now-do you see why I threw myself into this research?
Will started slightly. Bill got up and paced restlessly up and down.
