it. She was watching Kevin.
‘I have a feeling you were as bummed out as I was,’ she said to him.
Kevin breathed out noisily then took a bite of hamburger to avoid saying
anything he’d later regret.
‘Why don’t you want to talk about it?’ Candace asked.
Kevin shook his head while he chewed. He guessed his face was still
beet-red.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ Melanie said. ‘He’ll recover.’
Candace faced Melanie. ‘The bonobos are just so human,’ she commented,
going back to one of her original points, ‘so I guess we shouldn’t be
shocked that their genomes differ by only one and a half percent. But
something just occurred to me. If you guys are replacing the short arms
of chromosome six as well as some other smaller segments of the bonobo
genome with human DNA, what percentage do you think you’re dealing
with?’
Melanie looked at Kevin while she made a mental calculation. She arched
her eyebrows. ‘Hmmm,’ she said. ‘That’s a curious point. That would be
over two percent.’
‘Yeah, but the one and a half percent is not all on the short arm of
chromosome six,’ Kevin snapped again.
‘Hey, calm down, bucko,’ Melanie said. She put down her soft drink,
reached across the table and put her hand on Kevin’s shoulder. ‘You’re
out of control. All we’re doing is having a conversation. You know, it’s
sort of normal for people to sit and talk. I know you find that weird
since you’d rather interact with your centrifuge tubes, but what’s
wrong?’
Kevin sighed. It went against his nature, but he decided to confide in
these two bright, confident women. He admitted he was upset.
‘As if we didn’t know!’ Melanie said with another roll of her eyes.
‘Can’t you be more specific? What’s bugging you?’
‘Just what Candace is talking about,’ Kevin said.
‘She’s said a lot of things,’ Melanie said.
‘Yeah, and they’re all making me feel like I’ve made a monumental
mistake.’
Melanie took her hand away and stared into the depths of Kevin’s
topaz-colored eyes. ‘In what regard?’ she questioned.
‘By adding so much human DNA,’ Kevin said. ‘The short arm of chromosome
six has millions of base pairs and hundreds of genes that have nothing
to do with the major histocompatibility complex. I should have isolated
the complex instead of taking the easy route.’
‘So the creatures have a few more human proteins,’ Melanie said. ‘Big
deal!’
‘That’s exactly how I felt at first,’ Kevin said. ‘At least until I put
an inquiry out over the Internet, asking if anyone knew what other kinds
of genes were on the short arm of chromosome six. Unfortunately, one of
the responders informed me there was a large segment of developmental
genes. Now I have no idea what I’ve created.’
‘Of course you do,’ Candace said. ‘You’ve created a transgenic bonobo.’
‘I know,’ Kevin said with his eyes blazing. He was breathing rapidly and
perspiration had appeared on his forehead. ‘And by doing so I’m
terrified I’ve overstepped the bounds.’
CHAPTER 6
———
MARCH 5, 1997
1:00 P.M.
COGO, EQUATORIAL GUINEA
BERTRAM pulled his three-year-old Jeep Cherokee into the parking area
behind the town hall and yanked on the brake. The car had been giving
him trouble and had spent innumerable days being repaired in the motor
pool. But the problem had persisted, and that fact made him particularly
irritated when Kevin Marshall pretended not to know how lucky he was to
get a new Toyota every two years. Bertram wasn’t scheduled for a new car
for another year.
Bertram took the stairs that rose up behind the first-floor arcade to
reach the veranda that ringed the building. From there he walked into
the central office. By Siegfried Spallek’s choice, it had not been
air-conditioned. A large ceiling fan lazily rotated with a particular
wavering hum. The long, flat blades kept the sizable room’s warm, moist
air on the move.
Bertram had called ahead, so Siegfried’s secretary, a broad-faced black
man named Aurielo from the island of Bioko, was expecting him and waved
him into the inner office. Aurielo had been trained in France as a
schoolteacher, but had been unemployed until GenSys founded the Zone.