‘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