O’Brien found this objection amusing. “You who made that decision had, in effect, made apes of yourselves when you demanded the creation of a superhuman,” she said.
According to her, Phase Two had proved more difficult. For months, the hardships to build upon Phase One posed a puzzle to the scientists. Out of a group of thirty fertilized ova, only ten survived the first in vitro gestation period. Five were stillborn, and three others suffered from hydrocephalus, a condition in which the skull contained too much cerebrospinal fluid. These unfortunates were regretfully euthanized. Only two survived the entire neomutagenic process.
Yes, there were failures, O’Brien conceded. Abrasions, she called them. But, she explained, in any work so unprecedentedly technical that it combined all aspects of biophysics and cell-fusion techniques, no one could possibly have anticipated all the variables.
Stabilization of the basic genetic material—human beings—when exposed to the synthetic mutagen had proved to be a problem. Though it had eventually been overcome, the solution arrived after the nuclear firestorm reshaped the face of the world.
However, once the fundamental limitations of Phase Two were overcome, the Phase Three level was quickly achieved. The two surviving subjects, a male and female designated as Alpha and Epsilon, matured to the toddler stage within a month. Instead of being exultant, O’Brien accused, fear was the primary reaction.
“You are ordinary men, no matter how powerful you think you are,” O’Brien said grimly. “You cannot envision my concept of a superbeing, bred to survive in the world you created. You wanted me to return to the original project of generational accelerated growth cycles. That I could not do. What you believed would require ten years or more was reduced to a mere eighteen months.”
The Alpha and Epsilon subjects showed extraordinary manual dexterity and heightened cognitive abilities almost from the moment they emerged from the incubation chambers. The infants possessed IQs so far beyond the range of standard tests as to render them meaningless. They mastered language in a matter of weeks, speaking in whole sentences, albeit grammatically incorrect.
Physically, Alpha and Epsilon were the epitomes of perfect human development. The structural properties of their bodies had been successfully modified while still in their in vitro wombs. As O’Brien put it, “All of God’s design faults in human physiology were corrected.”
Yes, the infants were perfect, despite the ruby red hue of their eyes. Some of the scientists on staff had problems relating to them because of this characteristic, referring to them half jokingly as “children of the damned.”
As the children grew at an astonishing rate, O’Brien made a point of stopping by their nursery every night to tuck them in. Epsilon would always smile up into her face and with pudgy baby fingers toy with the strands of her long red hair, asking her questions in her high, piping, sweet voice.
Alpha, on the other hand, would gaze solemnly up into her face and never smile or reach for her. He silently studied her, examined her, inspected her. And, she suspected, judged her.
When the infants had developed to the physical age of three and half years old, but chronologically only six months out of the incubation tanks, the accident happened.
A door-lock mechanism jammed, a pressure gauge malfunctioned and a routine test in a hyperbaric chamber went horribly awry. The purpose of the experiment was to test the response time of the children as compared to normal subjects of their physical age. Epsilon was in the chamber at the time, and when O’Brien realized something was wrong, she lost all of her scientific objectivity.
The child’s eyes behind the glass of the chamber were wide and sad, and Dr. Connaught O’Brien screamed frantically at the technician in charge to do something, to do anything. Epsilon suffocated, and O’Brien’s heart broke.
The child’s death was the demarcation point between what the mission had been and what it became. The atmosphere of the redoubt resembled that of people trapped aboard a slowly but inexorably sinking ship. O’Brien grew obsessively protective of Alpha. He, too, seemed changed by his sibling’s death. His face took on a fixed, watchful expression.
In the months following Epsilon’s suffocation, staff members began complaining of insomnia, and when they managed to sleep, of nightmares. Accidents became the uale rather than the anomalies. At first, O’Brien attributed the occurrences to stress. After all, the mat-trans unit was the only way in or out of the redoubt, and everyone was afraid to use it without Overproject Excalibur’s permission, afraid of what horrific new situation they might jump into. O’Brien suspected that their fear of what was being bred within the walls of the installation was far greater than what the holocaust might have spawned outside them.