Keep The Giraffe Burning Read Free Page A

see what would happen if he gave them good long-distance vision. Maybe he was so pleased with the result that he then taught them to make semaphore signals with their feelers. The rest is history.’
    Dusting his lapel, Dr Grobe said, ‘I don’t quite follow. Semaphore signals?’
    ‘One cockroach is stupid. But a few thousand of them in good communication could make up a fair brain. Our tinkerer probably hastened that along by intensive breeding and group learning problems, killing off the failures … it would take ten years at the outside.’
    ‘Really? And how long would the conquest of man take? How would the little insects fare against the armies of the world?’
    ‘They never need to try. Armies are run by governments, and governments are run, for all practical purposes, by small panels of experts. Think tanks like the Orinoco Institute. And – this just occurred to me – for all practical purposes, you run the Institute.’
    For once, Dr Grobe did not looked surprised. ‘Oh, so I’m in on the plot, am I?’
    ‘We’re all so crazy, we really depend on you. You can ensure that we work for the good of the cockroaches, or else you can get rid of us – send us away, or encourage our suicides.’
    ‘Why should I do that?’
    ‘Because you are afraid of them.’
    ‘Not at all.’ But his hand twitched, and a little cigar ash fell on his immaculate trousers. I felt my point was proved.
    ‘Damn. I’ll have to sponge that. Excuse me.’
    He stepped into his private washroom and closed the door. My feeling of triumph suddenly faded. Maybe I was finally cracking. What evidence did I really have?
    On the other hand, Dr Grobe was taking a long time in there. I stole over to the washroom door and listened.
    ‘… verge of suicide …,’ he murmured. ‘… yes … give up the idea, but … yes, that’s just what I …’
    I threw back the door on a traditional spy scene. In the half-darkness, Dr G was hunched over the medicine cabinet, speaking into a microphone. He wore earphones.
    ‘Hank, don’t be a foo–’
    I hit him, not hard, and he sat down on the edge of the tub. He looked resigned.
    ‘So this is my imagined conspiracy, is it? Where do these wires lead?’
    They led inside the medicine cabinet, to a tiny apparatus. A dozen brown ellipses had clustered around it, like a family around the TV.
    ‘Let me explain,’ he said.
    ‘Explanations are unnecessary, Doctor. I just want to get out of here, unless your six-legged friends can stop me.’
    ‘They might. So could I. I could order the guards to shoot you. I could have you put away with your crazy friends. I could even have you tried for murder, just now.’
    ‘Murder?’ I followed his gaze back into the office. From under the desk, a pair of feet. ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘Hel Rasmussen. Poisoned himself a few minutes before you came in. Believe me, it wasn’t pleasant, seeing the poor fellow holding a bottle of cyanide to his armpit. He left a note blaming you, in a way.’
    ‘Me!’
    ‘You were the last straw. This afternoon, he saw you take an axe and deliberately cut down one of those beautiful maple trees in the yard. Destruction of beauty – it was too much for him.’
    Trees again. I went to the office window and looked out at the floodlit landscape. One of the maples was missing.
    Dr Grobe and I sat dawn again at our respective interview stations, while I thought this over. Blenheim and his mask came into it, I was sure of that. But why?
    Dr Grobe fished his lifeless cigar from the ashtray. ‘The point is, I can stop you from making any trouble for me. So you may as well hear me out.’ He scratched a match on the sole of Hel’s shoe and relit the cigar.
    ‘All right, Oddpork. You win. What happens now?’
    ‘Nothing much. Nothing at all. If my profession has any meaning, it’s to keep things from happening.’ He blew out the match. ‘I’m selling ordinary life. Happiness, as you must now see, lies in developing a pleasant,