At one time Jimmy’s mother had worked for OrganInc Farms. That was how his mother had met his father: they’d both worked at the same Compound, on the same project. His mother was a microbiologist: it had been her job to study the proteins of the bioforms unhealthy to pigoons, and to modify their receptors in such a way that they could not bond with the receptors on pigoon cells, or else to develop drugs that would act as blockers.

“It’s very simple,” she said to Jimmy in one of her explaining moods. “The bad microbes and viruses want to get in through the cell doors and eat up the pigoons from the inside. Mummy’s job was to make locks for the doors.” On her computer screen she showed Jimmy pictures of the cells, pictures of the microbes, pictures of the microbes getting into the cells and infecting them and bursting them open, close-up pictures of the proteins, pictures of the drugs she had once tested. The pictures looked like the candy bins at the supermarket: a clear plastic bin of round candies, a clear plastic bin of jelly beans, a clear plastic bin of long licorice twizzles. The cells were like the clear plastic bins, with the lids you could lift up.

“Why aren’t you making the locks for the doors any more?” said Jimmy.

“Because I wanted to stay home with you,” she said, looking over the top of Jimmy’s head and puffing on her cigarette.

“What about the pigoons?” said Jimmy, alarmed. “The microbes will get into them!” He didn’t want his animal pals to burst open like the infected cells.