a biologically designed killing machine ith the capacity for
strategizing.
“I thought intelligence depended on brain size.”
He shrugged. “I’m just a cop.”
“Or on the number of folds in the brain surface.”
“Evidently they discovered different. Anyway,” Manuel said, “there was
a previous success. Something called the Francis Project, several
years ago. An amazingly smart golden retriever. The Wyvern operation
was launched to capitalize on what they learned from that. And at
Wyvern it wasn’t just about animal intelligence.
It was about enhancing human intelligence, about lots of things, many
things.”
In the studio, hands covered with Kevlar gloves, Toby placed the hot
vase into a bucket half filled with vermiculite. This was the next
stage of the annealing process.
Standing at Manuel’s side, I said, “Many things? What else?”
“They wanted to enhance human agility, speed, longevity-by finding ways
not just to transfer genetic material from one person to another but
from species to species.”
Species to species.
I heard myself say, “Oh, my God.”
Toby poured more of the granular vermiculite over the vase, until it
was covered. Vermiculite is a superb insulator that allows the glass
to continue cooling very slowly and at a constant rate.
I remembered something Roosevelt Frost had said: that the dogs, cats,
and monkeys were not the only experimental subjects in the labs at
Wyvern, that there was something worse.
“People,” I said numbly. “They experimented on people?”
“Soldiers court-martialed and found guilty of murder, condemned to life
sentences in military prisons. They could rot there . . . or take
part in the project and maybe win their freedom as a reward.
“But experimenting on people
“I doubt your mother knew anything about that. They didn’t always
share with her all the ways they applied her ideas.”
Toby must have heard our voices at the window, because he took off the
insulated gloves and raised the big goggles from his eyes to squint at
us. He waved.
“It all went wrong,” Manuel said. “I’m no scientist. Don’t ask me
how.
But it went wrong not just in one way. Many ways. It blew up in their
faces. Suddenly things happened they weren’t expecting.
Changes they didn’t contem late. The experimental animals and the
prisoners-their genetic makeup underwent changes that weren’t desired
and couldn’t be controlled.
I waited a moment, but he apparently wasn’t prepared to tell me more.
I pressed him: “A monkey escaped. A rhesus. They found it in Angela
Ferryman’s kitchen.” he searching look that Manuel turned on me was so
T penetrating that I was sure he had seen my heart, knew the contents
of my every pocket, and had an accurate count of the number of bullets
left in the Glock.
“They recaptured the rhesus,” he said, “but made the mistake ttributing
its escape to human error. They didn’t realize it had been let go,
released. They didn’t realize there were a few scientists in the
project who were . . . becoming.
“Becoming what?”
Just . . . becoming. Something new. Changing.”
Toby switched off the natural gas. The Fisher burner swallowed its own
flames.
“Changing how?” I asked Manuel.
“Whatever delivery system they developed to insert new genetic material
in a research animal or prisoner . . . that system just took on a life
of its own.”
Toby turned off all but one panel of fluorescents, so I could go inside
for a visit.
Manuel said, “Genetic material from other species was being carried
into the bodies of the project scientists without their being aware of
it.
Eventually, some of them began to have a lot in common with the
animals.”
“Jesus.”
“Too much in common maybe. There was some kind of . . .
episode. I don’t know the details. It was extremely violent. People
died. And all the animals either escaped or were let out.”
“The troop.”
“About a dozen smart, vicious monkeys, yes. But also dogs and cats .
.
. and nine of the prisoners.”
“And they’re still loose?”
“Three of the prisoners were killed in the attempt to recapture them.
The military police enlisted our help. That’s when most of the cops in
the department were contaminated. But the other six and all the