“Friends talk to each other,” Melanie said. “They communicate. They don’t hide their feelings and make others feel uncomfortable. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Kevin said. He’d never considered the idea his behavior was capable of making others uncomfortable.
“Think so?” Melanie chided. “How can I explain it so that you know so!”
Kevin swallowed. “I guess I know so.”
Melanie rolled her eyes in frustration. “You are so evasive, it drives me bananas. But that’s okay; I can deal with it. What I can’t deal with is your outburst at lunch. And when I tried to ask you what’s wrong, you gave some vague comment about ‘overstepping the bounds’ and then clammed up, unable to talk about it. You can’t let this fester, whatever it is that’s bothering you. It will only hurt you and impede your friendships.”
Candace nodded agreement with all that Melanie had expressed.
Kevin looked back and forth between the two outspoken and tenacious women. As much as he resisted expressing his fears, at the moment he didn’t think he had much choice, especially with Melanie’s face inches away from his own. Not knowing how to begin he said: “I’ve seen smoke coming from Isla Francesca.”
“What’s Isla Francesca?” Candace asked.
“It’s the island where the transgenic bonobos go once they reach age three,” Melanie said. “So what’s with smoke?”
Kevin stood and motioned for the women to follow him. He walked over to his desk. With his index finger he pointed out the window toward Isla Francesca. “I’ve seen the smoke three times,” he said. “It’s always from the same place just to the left of the limestone ridge. It’s only a little curl snaking up into the sky, but it persists.”
Candace squinted. She was mildly nearsighted, but for vanity reasons didn’t wear glasses. “Is it the farthest island?” she asked. She thought she could just make out some brownish smudges on its spine that could have been rock. In the late-afternoon sunlight, the other islands in the chain appeared like homogeneous mounds of dark green moss.
“That’s the one,” Kevin said.
“So, big deal!” Melanie commented. “A couple of little fires. With all the lightning around here it’s no wonder.”
“That’s what Bertram Edwards suggested,” Kevin said. “But it can’t be lightning.”
“Who’s Bertram Edwards?” Candace asked.
“Why can’t it be lightning?” Melanie asked, ignoring Candace. “Maybe there’s some metal ore in that rocky ridge.”
“Ever hear the expression lightning never strikes the same place twice?” Kevin questioned. “The fire is not from lightning. Besides, the smoke persisted and has never moved.”
“Maybe some native people live out there,” Candace said.
“GenSys was very sure that was not the case before choosing the island,” Kevin said.
“Maybe some local fishermen visit,” Candace suggested.
“All the locals know it is forbidden,” Kevin said. “Because of the new Equatoguinean law it would be a capital offense. There’s nothing out there that would be worth dying for.”
“Then who started the fires?” Candace asked.
“Good God, Kevin!” Melanie exclaimed suddenly. “I’m beginning to get an idea what you’re thinking. But let me tell you, it’s preposterous.”
“What’s preposterous?” Candace asked. “Will someone clue me in?”
“Let me show you something else,” Kevin said. He turned to his computer terminal and with a few keystrokes called up the graphic of the island. He explained the system to the women, and as a demonstration, brought up the location of Melanie’s double. The little red light blinked just north of the escarpment very close to where his own had the day before.
“You have a double?” Candace asked. She was dumbfounded.
“Kevin and I were the guinea pigs,” Melanie said. “Our doubles were the first. We had to prove that the technology really works.”
“Okay, now that you women know how the locator system operates,” Kevin said, “let me show you what I did an hour ago, and we’ll see if we get the same disturbing result.” Kevin’s fingers played over the keyboard. “What I’m doing is instructing the computer to automatically locate all seventy-three of the doubles sequentially. The creatures’ numbers will occur in the corner followed by the blinking light on the graphic. Now watch.” Kevin clicked to start.
The system worked smoothly with only a short delay between the number appearing and then the red blinking light.
“I thought there were closer to a hundred animals,” Candace said.
“There are,” Kevin said. “But twenty-two of them are less than three years old. They are in the bonobo enclosure at the animal center.”
“Okay,” Melanie said after a few minutes of watching the computer function. “It’s working just as you said. What’s so disturbing?”
“Just hold on,” Kevin said.
All at once the number 37 appeared but no blinking red light. After a few moments, a prompt flashed onto the screen. It said: ANIMAL NOT LOCATED: CLICK TO RECOMMENCE.
Melanie looked at Kevin. “Where’s number thirty-seven?”
Kevin sighed. “What’s left is in the incinerator,” he said. “Number thirty-seven was Mr. Winchester’s double. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” Kevin clicked and the program restarted. Then it stopped again at forty-two.
“Was that Mr. Franconi’s double?” Candace asked. “The other liver transplant?”
Kevin shook his head. He pressed several keys, asking the computer the identity of forty-two. The name Warren Prescott appeared.
“So where’s forty-two?” Melanie asked.
“I don’t know for sure, but I know what I fear,” Kevin said. Kevin clicked and again the numbers and red lights alternately flashed on the screen.
When the entire program had run its course, it had indicated that seven of the bonobo doubles were unaccounted for, not including Franconi’s, which had been sacrificed.
“Is this what you found earlier?” Melanie asked.
Kevin nodded. “But it wasn’t seven, it was twelve. And although some of the ones that were missing this morning are still missing, most of them have reappeared.”
“I don’t understand,” Melanie said. “How can that be?”
“When I toured that island way back before all this started,” Kevin said, “I remember seeing some caves in that limestone cliff. What I’m thinking is that our creations are going into the caves, maybe even living in them. It’s the only way I can think of to explain why the grid would fail to pick them up.”
Melanie brought up a hand to cover her mouth. Her eyes reflected a flicker of horror and dismay.
Candace saw Melanie’s reaction. “Hey, come on, guys,” she pleaded. “What’s wrong? What are you thinking?”
Melanie lowered her hand. Her eyes were locked on Kevin’s. “What Kevin was referring to when he said he was terrified he’d overstepped the bounds,” she explained in a slow, deliberate voice, “was the fear that he’d created a human.”
“You’re not serious!” Candace exclaimed, but a glance at Kevin and then at Melanie indicated that she was.
For a full minute no one spoke.
Finally Kevin broke the silence. “I’m not suggesting a real human being in the guise of an ape,” Kevin said finally. “I’m suggesting that I’ve inadvertently created a kind of protohuman. Maybe something akin to our distant ancestral forebears who spontaneously appeared in nature from apelike animals four or five million years ago. Maybe back then the critical mutations responsible for the change occurred in the developmental genes I’ve subsequently learned are on the short arm of chromosome six.”
Candace found herself blankly gazing out the window, while her mind replayed the scene two days previous in the OR when the bonobo was about to be inducted under anesthesia. He’d made curious humanlike sounds and tried desperately to keep his hands free so that he could
continue to make the same wild gesture. He’d been constantly opening and closing his fingers and then sweeping his hands away from his body.
“You’re talking about some early hominidlike creature, something on the order of Homo erectus,” Melanie said. “It’s true we noticed the infant transgenic bonobos tended to walk upright more than their mothers. At the time we just thought it was cute.”
“Not so early a hominid as not to have used fire,” Kevin said. “Only true early man has used fire. And that’s what I’m worried I’ve been seeing on the island: campfires.”
“So, to put it bluntly,” Candace said, turning away from the window. “We’ve got a bunch of cavemen out there like back in prehistoric time.”
“Something like that,” Kevin said. As he’d expected the women were aghast. Strangely, he actually felt a little better now that he’d voiced his anxieties.
“What are we going to do?” Candace demanded. “I’m certainly not going to be involved with sacrificing any more until this is resolved one way or the other. I was having a hard enough time dealing with the situation when I thought the victim was an ape.”
“Wait a sec,” Melanie said. She spread her hands with fingers apart. Her eyes were blazing anew. “Maybe we’re jumping to conclusions here. There’s no proof of all this. Everything we’ve been talking about is circumstantial at best.”
“True, but there’s more,” Kevin said. He turned back to the computer and instructed it to display the locations of all the bonobos on the island simultaneously. Within seconds, two red splotches began pulsating. One was in the location where Melanie’s double had been. The other was north of the lake. Kevin looked up at Melanie. “What does this data suggest to you?”
“It suggests there are two groups,” she said. “Do you think it is permanent?”
“It was the same earlier,” Kevin said. “I think it is a real phenomenon. Even Bertram mentioned it. That’s not typical of bonobos. They get along in larger social groups than chimps, plus these are all relatively young animals. They should all be in one group.”
Melanie nodded. Over the previous five years she’d learned a lot about bonobo behavior.
“And there is something else more upsetting,” Kevin said. “Bertram told me one of the bonobos killed one of the pygmies on the retrieval of Winchester’s double. It wasn’t an accident. The bonobo aggressively threw a rock. That kind of aggression is more associated with human behavior than with bonobos.”
“I’d have to agree,” Melanie said. “But it’s still circumstantial. All of it.”
“Circumstantial or not,” Candace said, “I’m not going to have it on my conscience.”
“I feel the same way,” Melanie said. “I’ve spent today getting two new female bonobos started on the egg-collection protocol. I’m not going to proceed until we find out if this wild idea about these possible protohumans is valid or not.”
“That’s not going to be easy,” Kevin said. “To prove it, somebody has to go to the island. The trouble is there are only two people who can authorize a visit: Bertram Edwards or Siegfried Spallek. I already tried to talk with Bertram, and even though I brought up the issue about the smoke, he made it very clear that no one was allowed near the island except for a pygmy who brings supplementary food.”
“Did you tell him what you are worried about?” Melanie asked.
“Not in so many words,” Kevin said. “But he knew. I’m sure of it. He wasn’t interested. The problem is that he and Siegfried have been included in the project bonuses. Consequently, they are going to make damn sure nothing threatens it. I’m afraid they’re venal enough not to care what’s on the island. And on top of their venality we have to weigh in Siegfried’s sociopathy.”
“Is he that bad?” Candace asked. “I’d heard rumors.”
“Whatever you heard, it’s ten times worse,” Melanie said. “He’s a major sleazeball. To give you an example, he executed some impoverished Equatoguinean men because they’d been caught poaching in the Zone, where he likes to hunt.”
“He killed them himself?” Candace questioned with shock and revulsion.
“Not by himself,” Melanie said. “He had the men tried in a kangaroo court here in Cogo. Then they were executed by a handful of Equatoguinean soldiers at the soccer field.”
“And to add insult to injury,” Kevin said, “he uses the skulls as bowls for odds and ends on his desk.”
“Sorry I asked,” Candace said with a shiver.
“What about Dr. Lyons?” Melanie asked.
Kevin laughed. “Forget it. He’s more venal than Bertram. This whole operation is his baby. I tried to talk to him about the smoke, too. He was even less receptive. Claimed it was my imagination. Frankly I don’t trust him, although I have to give him credit for being generous with bonuses and stocks. He’s cleverly given everyone connected with the project a real stake in the venture, particularly Bertram and Siegfried.”
“So, that leaves it all up to us,” Melanie said. “Let’s find out if it’s your imagination or not. What do you say the three of us take a quick trip to Isla Francesca?”
“You’re joking,” Kevin said. “It’s a capital offense without authorization.”
“It’s a capital offense for locals,” Melanie said. “That can’t apply to us. In our case, Siegfried has to answer to GenSys.”
“Bertram specifically forbade visits,” Kevin said. “I offered to go by myself, and he said no.”
“Well, big deal,” Melanie said. “So he gets mad. What is he going to do, fire us? I’ve been here long enough so that I don’t think that would be half bad. Besides, they can’t do without you. That’s the reality.”
“Do you think it might be dangerous?” Candace asked.
“Bonobos are peaceful creatures,” Melanie said. “Much more so than chimps, and chimps aren’t dangerous unless you corner them.”
“What about the man who was killed?” Candace said.
“That was during a retrieval,” Kevin said. “They had to get close enough to shoot a dart gun. Also, it was the fourth retrieval.”
“All we want to do is observe,” Melanie said.
“Okay, how do we get there?” Candace asked.
“Drive, I guess,” Melanie said. “That’s how they go when they do a release or a retrieval. There must be some kind of bridge.”
“There’s a road that goes east along the coast,” Kevin said. “It’s paved to the native village then it becomes a track. That’s how I went on the visit to the island before we started the program. For a hundred feet or so the island and the mainland are only separated by a channel thirty feet wide. Back then there was a wire suspension bridge stretched between two mahogany trees.”
“Maybe we can view the animals without even going across,” Candace said. “Let’s do it.”
“You ladies are fearless,” Kevin remarked.
“Hardly,” Melanie said. “But I don’t see any problem with driving up there and checking the situation out. Once we know what we’re dealing with, we can make a better decision about what we want to do.”
“When do you want to do this?” Kevin questioned.
“I’d say now,” Melanie replied. She glanced at her watch. “There’s no better time. Ninety percent of the population of the town is either at the waterfront chickee bar, splashing around in the pool, or sweating buckets at the athletic center.”
Kevin sighed, let his arms fall limply to his sides, and capitulated. “Whose car should we take?” he asked.
“Yours,” Melanie said without hesitation. “Mine doesn’t even have four-wheel drive.”
As the trio descended the stairs and made their way across the sweltering blacktop of the parking area, Kevin had the gnawing sense they were making a mistake. But in the face of the women’s resolve, he felt reluctant to voice his reservations.
On the east exit of the town, they passed the athletic center’s tennis courts, which were chockful of players. Between the humidity and heat, the playe
rs looked as drenched as if they’d jumped into a swimming pool with their tennis outfits on.
Kevin drove. Melanie sat in the front passenger seat, while Candace sat in the back. The windows were all open, since the temperature had fallen into the high eighties. The sun was low in the west, directly behind them and peeking in and out of clouds along the horizon.
Just beyond the soccer field the vegetation closed in around the road. Brightly colored birds flitted in and out of the deepening shadows. Large insects annihilated themselves against the windshield like miniature kamikaze pilots.
“The jungle looks dense,” Candace said. She’d never traveled east from the town.
“You have no idea,” Kevin said. When he’d first arrived he’d tried to take some hikes in the area, but with the profusion of vines and creepers, it was all but impossible without a machete.
“I just had a thought about the aggression issue,” Melanie said. “The passivity of bonobo society is generally attributed to its matriarchal character. Because of the skewed demand for male doubles, our program has a population that’s mostly male. There has to be a lot of competition for the few females.”
“That’s a good point,” Kevin agreed. He wondered why Bertram hadn’t thought of it.
“Sounds like my type of place,” Candace joked. “Maybe I should book Isla Francesca instead of Club Med on my next vacation.”
Melanie laughed. “Let’s go together,” she said.
They passed a number of Equatoguineans on their way home from work in Cogo. Most of the women carried jugs and parcels on top of their heads. The men were generally empty-handed.
“It’s a strange culture,” Melanie commented. “The women do the lion’s share of the work: growing the food, carrying the water, raising the kids, cooking the meals, taking care of the house.”
“What do the men do?” Candace asked.
“Sit around and discuss metaphysics,” Melanie said.
“I just had an idea,” Kevin said. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Maybe we should talk to the pygmy who takes out the food to the island first and hear what he has to say.”