A Cage of Butterflies Read Online Free PDF Page A

Raw talent, intelligent, creative, but strangely naive in so many ways. And they had this incredible group identity.
    From the moment I arrived, it was obvious I was being checked out. And it wasn’t too subtle. Greg and Mikki went straight into this unscripted double-act. Tricky questions to see how much I knew; calculated actions to see how authoritarian I might be. Greg even tried his patented “stare”, leaning forward on his crutches, watching my reaction. But I was up to that one. I looked straight down at his legs, then I held his gaze.
    â€œAnd what happened to your legs, Greg?” I delivered the question with what I hoped was a friendly smile.
    There was a momentary flicker of hesitation. Then he smiled back. “Ask God. I was born this way.” Then, after a pause. “Would you like a Coke?” And that was it. Test over.
    I guess I passed. The atmosphere warmed up and the rest of the group joined in the welcome. That was typical of how things worked in the “think-tank” too. Greg and Mikki were the natural leaders. No one voted them in, it was just accepted; as if they knew instinctively what was good for the group as a whole. Like a big brother and sister, they looked after the others with a mixture of bullying and TLC in roughly equal proportions.
    Not that they were really any older than the others. They just understood, and the others respected that understanding. And Greg and Mikki were a team. As incompatible as they appeared at first glance, they complemented each other as perfectly as any couple I’ve ever met.
    Mikki was beautiful. Not in any pretty, adolescent sense – the type of beauty that fades to plainness sometime in the twenties, and remains only as a memory in high school photographs. She was really beautiful. Small and dark, with high cheekbones and huge liquid-brown eyes that sparked with intelligence – and a self-confidence that was somehow much older than her fifteen years. And she didn’t just walk, she glided, with an untutored grace and poise, a dancer’s elegance.
    So different to Greg.
    He was taller, even if he didn’t appear to be, hunched awkwardly over those crutches of his. He had less then ten per cent mobility in his legs – a neurological disorder he was born with – but somehow, once you got to know him, it was hard even to consider it a disability. It may have slowed him down physically, but nothing came close to slowing him down mentally. His mind was razor-sharp, lightning-quick; he was passionately interested in everything. He could follow all but the most abstract of Gretel’s mathematical meanderings, read close to a hundred pages an hour with excellent recall, and he possessed an amazing general knowledge.
    One of the most disturbing experiences I had in all my time with the “think-tank” was playing Trivial Pursuit with Mikki and Greg. It was over in less than fifteen minutes, and in that time, between the two of them, I got to answer maybe three questions. Up until then it had always been my favourite game.
    Each of the kids in the tank had unique qualities, and I loved them all, but Greg and Mikki were special.
    I’d been there almost two months before I was taken into the second complex and introduced to the other project. The real focus of Larsen’s obsession. The one that almost destroyed so much.
    Towards the end of February 1990, I finally met the Babies …

VI
    The Other Side of the Glass
    February 24, 1990
    â€œThe other two arrived about ten days ago …” MacIntyre was running a plastic card through the electronic lock. He punched in a code and the door clicked open. As he returned the card to his wallet, he motioned Susan inside.
    The inner sanctum, she thought. I’ve finally made it.
    MacIntyre was still talking. “That makes five of them.” He paused, searching for the correct words. “They all … appear to be severely autistic, but as