happened.”
“Working out there at Wyvern, underground somewhere?”
“There and other places, yeah. And if they find a way to combat it .
.
. then wonderful things could come from this.”
As he spoke, his gaze moved from me to the studio window.
“Toby,” I said.
Manuel’s eyes shifted to me again.
I said, “This thing, this plague, whatever it is-You’re hoping that if
they can bring it under control, they’ll be able to use it to help Toby
somehow.”
From the barn roof, an owl asked its single question of identity “You
have a selfish interest here, too, Chris.” five times in quick
succession, as if suspicious of everyone in Moonlight Bay.
I took a deep breath and said, “That’s the only reason my mother would
work on biological research for military purposes.
The only reason. Because there was a very good chance that something
would come of it that might cure my XP.”
“And something may still come of it.”
“It was a weapons project?”
“Don’t blame her, Chris. Only a weapons project would have tens of
billions of dollars behind it. She’d never have had a chance to do
this work for the right reasons. It was just too expensive.”
This was no doubt true. Nothing but a weapons project would have the
bottomless resources needed to fund the complex research that my
mother’s most profound concepts necessitated.
Wisteria Jane (Milbury) Snow was a theoretical geneticist. This means
that she did the heavy thinking while other scientists did the heavy
lifting. She didn’t spend much of her time in laboratories or even
working in the virtual lab of a computer. Her lab was her mind, and it
was extravagantly equipped. She theorized, and with guidance from her,
others sought to prove her theories.
I have said that she was brilliant but perhaps not that she was
extraordinarily brilliant. Which she was. She could have chosen any
university affiliation in the world. They all sought her.
My father loved Ashdon, but he would have followed her where she wished
to go. He would have thrived in any academic environment.
She restricted herself to Ashdon because of me. Most of the truly
great universities are in either major or midsize cities, where I’d be
no more limited by day than I am in Moonlight Bay, but where I’d have
no hope of a rich life by night. Cities are bright even after
sunset.
And the few dark precincts of a city are not places where a young boy
on a bicycle could safely go adventuring between dusk and dawn.
She made less of her life in order to make more of mine. She confined
herself to a small town, willing to leave her full potential
unrealized, to give me a chance at realizing mine.
Tests to determine genetic damage in a fetus were rudimentary when I
was born. If the analytic tools had been sufficiently advanced for my
XP to have been detected in the weeks following my conception, perhaps
she would have chosen not to bring me into the world.
How I love the world in all its beauty and strangeness.
Because of me, however, the world will grow ever stranger in the years
to come-and perhaps less beautiful.
If not for me, she would have refused to put her mind to work for the
project at Wyvern, would never have led them on new roads of inquiry.
And we would not have followed one of those roads to the precipice on
which we now stand.
As Orson moved to make room for him, Manuel came to the window. He
stared in at his son, and with his face more brightly lit, I could see
not a wild light in his eyes but only overwhelming love.
“Enhancing the intelligence of animals,” I said. “How would that have
military applications?”
“For one thing, what better spy than a dog as smart as a human being,
sent behind enemy lines? An impenetrable disguise. And they don’t
check dogs’ passports. What better scout on a battlefield?”
Maybe You engineer an exceptionally powerful dog that’s smart but also
savagely vicious when it needs to be. You have a new kind of soldier: